Categorisation and idealised cognitive models
In this chapter, we continue our exploration of the human conceptual system by focusing on categorisation: our ability to identify perceived similarities (and differences) between entities and thus group them together. Categorisation both relies upon and gives rise to concepts. Thus categorisation is central to the conceptual system, because it accounts, in part, for the organisation of concepts within the network of encyclopaedic knowledge. Categorisation is of fundamental importance for both cognitive psychologists and semanticists, since both disciplines require a theory of categorisation in order to account for knowledge representation and indeed for linguistic meaning. Central to this chapter is the discussion of findings that emerged from the work of cognitive psychologist Eleanor Rosch and her colleagues in the 1970s, and the impact of these findings on the development of cognitive semantics. In particular, we will be concerned with the work of George Lakoff, who addressed findings relating to prototype structure and basic level categories revealed by research in cognitive psychology, and who developed a cognitive semantic theory of idealised cognitive models (ICMs) in order to account for these phenomena. The influence of Lakoff’s research, and of his book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (1987), was important for the development of cognitive semantics. In particular, this book set the scene for cognitive semantics approaches to conceptual metaphor and metonymy, lexical semantics (word meaning) and grammatical structure. In this chapter, then, we set out the the oretical background of Chapters 9 and 10 where we will address Lakoff’s theory of conceptual metaphor and metonymy and his theory of word meaning in detail.
We begin the chapter by explaining how Rosch’s research on categorisation was important in the development of cognitive semantics, setting this discussion against the context of the classical view of categorisation that was superseded by Rosch’s findings. We then look in detail at the findings to emerge from Rosch’s research (section 8.2) and explore the development of Lakoff’s theory of cognitive models that was developed in response to this research (section 8.3). Finally, we briefly explore the issue of linguistic categorisation in the light of the empirical findings and theoretical explanations presented in this chapter (section 8.4).
