ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the assumptions and commitments that make cognitive linguistics a distinctive enterprise. It outlines two key commitments widely shared by cognitive linguists. These are the 'Generalisation Commitment' and the 'Cognitive Commitment'. These two commitments underlie the orientation and approach adopted by cognitive linguists, and the assumptions and methodologies employed in the two main branches of the cognitive linguistics enterprise, cognitive semantics and cognitive grammar. One of the assumptions that cognitive linguists make is that there are common structuring principles that hold across different aspects of language, and that an important function of linguistics is to identify these common principles. The chapter explains the embodied cognition thesis which is central to much research in cognitive linguistics and addresses the nature of the relationship between language, mind and experience. The fact that our experience is embodied — that is, structured in part by the nature of the bodies we have and by our neurological organisation – has consequences for cognition.
