Introduction

In chapter 1, we noted that one of the basic hypotheses of cognitive linguistics is that, in Langacker's words, semantics is conceptualization. This hypothesis challenges the view that semantics is purely truth-conditional. We have already seen in chapter 2 examples of semantic interpretations of linguistic expressions that go beyond truth-conditional semantics. Situations can be framed in different ways – e.g., my dad vs. dad vs. father and waste time vs. spend time in My dad wasted most of the morning on the bus (see §2.1) – and these ways convey to the hearer different conceptualizations of the relationship between the speaker and the speaker's father, of the positive or negative quality of the situation being described, and even of the nature of the situation being described (characterizing time in terms of money).

Framing is pervasive in language: as we argued in chapter 2, all linguistic units evoke a semantic frame. Yet framing is but one example of the ubiquity of conceptualization in linguistic expression. All aspects of the grammatical expression of a situation involve conceptualization in one way or another, including inflectional and derivational morphology and even the basic parts of speech. Whenever we utter a sentence, we unconsciously structure every aspect of the experience we intend to convey. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the range of conceptualization processes or construal operations that human beings employ in language.