Podstawy językoznawstwa kognitywnego w świetle myśli Kanta, Wittgensteina i Whorfa
The Fundaments of Cognitive Linguistics in the Light of Kant, Wittgenstein, and Whorf

Summary/Abstract: In the recent thirty years, much of the research carried out in the field of linguistics has been based on the experientialist philosophy formulated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, treating language as a key to uncover the cognitively unconscious in human thought and operating with notions such as conceptualization, conceptual metaphor, or image schema. Nevertheless, despite the great success of the cognitive linguistics enterprise, the basic philosophical assumptions that lie at the foundation of the paradigm may still raise controversies and trigger lively discussions. The present article aims to shed more light at some of the essential issues pertaining to the modern-day cognitive approach by tracing its roots to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Benjamin Lee Whorf. To start with, the article discusses the place that the philosophy of experiential realism takes in the basic division between realism and anti-realism, and attempts to demonstrate that the quest to uphold the basic realistic stance while still giving a chief role to human conceptualization is in many ways an elaboration of Kant’s “Copernican revolution”. Even more traces are found in the late works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who with his “Philosophical Investigations” laid foundations for the current cognitive theory of categorization, not only helping realize the blurry character of category borders but also questioning the hitherto dominating atomistic approach to meaning. Perhaps the most noteworthy inspirations, however, can be found in the writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf who, like the modern-day cognitive linguists, was deeply interested in the variety of the different models that humans impose on the real world, and who may have prefigured much of the currently popular theory of conceptual metaphor. Overall, a deeper insight into the philosophy of the three discussed thinkers allows us to better understand the roots of the modern-day cognitive linguistics and erase some of the controversies that have arisen around it over the years.

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