Methods in Cognitive Linguistics: (18 Human Cognitive Processing)

Methods in Cognitive Linguistics is an introduction to empirical methodology for language researchers. Intended as a handbook to exploring the empirical dimension of the theoretical questions raised by Cognitive Linguistics, the volume presents guidelines for employing methods from a variety of intersecting disciplines, laying out different ways of gathering empirical evidence. The book is divided into five sections. Methods and Motivations provides the reader with the preliminary background in scientific methodology and statistics. The sections on Corpus and Discourse Analysis, and Sign Language and Gesture describe different ways of investigating usage data. Behavioral Research describes methods for exploring mental representation, simulation semantics, child language development, and the relationships between space and language, and eye movements and cognition. Lastly, Neural Approaches introduces the reader to ERP research and to the computational modeling of language.

Table of Contents:
1. Contributors; 2. Acknowledgements; 3. Foreword (by Talmy, Leonard); 4. Introduction: The many faces of research in Cognitive Linguistics; 5. I. Methods and motivations; 6. Why cognitive linguists should care more about empirical methods (by Gibbs, Raymond); 7. They actually said that? An introduction to working with usage data through discourse and corpus analysis (by Mittelberg, Irene); 8. An introduction to experimental methods for language researchers (by Gonzalez-Marquez, Monica); 9. Inferential statistics in the context of empirical cognitive linguistics (by Nunez, Rafael); 10. II. Corpus and discourse analysis; 11. Multiple empirical approaches to a complex analysis of discourse (by Waugh, Linda R.); 12. A case for a cognitive corpus linguistics (by Grondelaers, Stef); 13. III. Sign language and gesture; 14. Empirical methods in signed language research (by Wilcox, Sherman); 15. Looking at space to study mental spaces: Co-speech gesture as a crucial data source in cognitive linguistics (by Sweetser, Eve); 16. Methodology for multimodality: One way of working with speech and gesture data (by Mittelberg, Irene); 17. IV. Behavioral research; 18. Experimental methods for studying language and space (by Carlson, Laura A.); 19. Experimental methods for simulation semantics (by Bergen, Benjamin K.); 20. Experimental methods for studying the mental representation of language (by Hasson, Uri); 21. Eye movements in language and cognition: A brief introduction (by Richardson, Daniel C.); 22. Speaking for the wordless: Methods for studying the foundations of cognitive linguistics in infants (by Brandone, Amanda); 23. Experimental study of first and second language morphological processing (by Gor, Kira); 24. V. Neural approaches; 25. Electrifying results: ERP data and cognitive linguistics (by Coulson, Seana); 26. Bridging language with the rest of cognition: Computational, algorithmic and neurobiological issues and methods (by Edelman, Shimon); 27. Index

Review :
This book is indispensable for all researchers, whatever their discipline, working on language and cognition. Monica Gonzalez-Marquez has performed a great service for the research community. The first single volume collection of its kind. Methods in Cognitive Linguistics provides an indispensable overview of the state of the art and new directions, bringing together some of the most influential and innovative scholars working in the field today. This represents indispensable reading for students and established scholars alike, and will be required reading on courses I teach in cognitive linguistics. For cognitive linguistics to move beyond the tradition of relying on researchers' intuitions, and to learn how language use provides clues about cognitive processes (of non-linguists, too!), we need more explicit articulations of research methods. This book makes a huge contribution toward that goal. The most remarkable thing about MCL is that none of these contributions would have been as powerful if they were scattered in seperate issues of discipline-specific journals. Yet together they send one startling message: Let's five each other a hand, for together we cab leap over chasms! I wish someone would have handed me a book like this one on my first day in graduate school. It would have made a world of a difference. Of course, graduate students are not the only ones who stand to benefit from reading it. The book draws together a wide range of approaches within cognitive linguistics, so that it will prove fruitful for anyone wanting to explore new or unfamiliar areas in this field. This book is sure to get the recognition it deserves. It is well-written, well-edited, and timely. The value of this book is enormous, it is, essentially, a highly practical, yet sophisticated, handbook. [...] This is probably the first introduction to many of the methodologies available to linguists taking the emperical study of language seriously. No matter what your interest in language is, this book will quite probably have something to offer.