Introduction: Approaches to language, culture, and cognition

By recognizing that the study of language, culture, and cognition has been fragmented into separate disciplines and paradigms (see Beller, Bender, and Medin, 2012; Kronenfeld, Bennardo, de Munck, and Fischer, 2011), we aim to re-establish dialogue between cognitive linguistics and linguistic anthropology in order to advance our understanding of the relationship among language, culture, and cognition (see Blount, 1995[1974]; Blount and Sanches, 1977; Casson, 1981; Dougherty, 1985; Giglioli, 1972; Gumperz and Hymes, 1972; Sanches and Blount, 1975 for earlier attempts). This volume particularly highlights the ways in which cognitive linguistics can contribute to a better understanding of cultural and social phenomena. In so doing, it aims to provide insights into the theory and practice of linguistic anthropology, which has been mainly concerned with ‘the cultural contextualization and social uses of language, and … the acquisition of communicative competence’ (Keesing, 1992: 604; also see Duranti, 2001, 2009).