ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces some basic cognitive linguistic principles, and provides an overview of cognitive poetics, a field which has focused on the role of the mind in literary reading but which we now extend out to examine reading in education contexts. Cognitive linguistics is an umbrella term for a broad discipline that covers a number of approaches concerned with the relationship between language and the mind. In essence, whilst retaining all of the principles of stylistics, cognitive poetics additionally recognises the value that recent and ongoing discoveries in cognitive linguistics and science can offer. As the author explains: where cognitive poetics takes its exploration of reading as interaction a step is in its recognition that narrative understanding and response necessarily involves a central concern with what happens in the mind as we engage with and reflect on stories. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
