Cognitive Approaches to Specialist Languages

Product Description

Specialist languages, such as the languages of law, business, aviation, football, and politics, can be perceived as highly conventionalized, semi-natural and not fully autonomous communication codes limited to specific, and predominantly formal, situations. A large number of them can be best characterized by subject matter and semantic content, but the most important distinctive element in their make-up is the frame of context in which they are embedded. This volume discusses various ways of approaching the problems associated with the very broad phenomenon of specialist languages by means of the analytical mechanisms and theoretical conceptions developed within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. The volume includes research carried out by world-renowned experts in the field.

About the Author

Professor Marcin Grygiel is the Head of the Section of Specialist Languages at the Department of English Studies at the University of Rzeszów, Poland. He organizes conferences on specialist languages and theme sessions devoted to specialized discourse, language for specific purposes, and language variation. He is the author of four books, presenting cognitive linguistic studies on various aspects of language variation and structure, and is the co-editor (with Laura Janda) of Slavic Linguistics in a Cognitive Framework.