ABSTRACT
Alker found the insights of cognitive linguistics both consistent with the spirit of his more formal, linguistic, hermeneutic modeling, as well as broadly suggestive for the development of new methodologies appropriate to humanistic studies of the social world of international relations. This chapter suggests how methods developed from a cognitive linguistic approach can further Alker's intellectual agenda: a commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to research, sensitive to cross-cultural meanings and characterized by dialectical logic of knowledge cumulation. It sketches out the cognitive linguistic approach, emphasizing Alker's relationship with one of its founding figures, George Lakoff. The chapter develops an “Alkerian” reformulation of conceptual metaphor theory that embraces his dialectical attitude and engages in contextualized discourse analysis. It presents a case study of the 2001 EP-3 “Spyplane incident” between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) to suggest ways to design post-linguistic turn, inter-cultural, globalization-era IR research with an Alkerian sensibility using conceptual metaphor analysis.
