Cognitive linguistics is purported to be a usage-based approach, yet only recently has research in some of its subfields turned to spontaneous spoken (versus written) language data. The collection of Alan Cienki’s Ten Lectures on Spoken Language and Gesture from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics considers what it means to apply different approaches from within this field to the dynamic, multimodal combination of speech and gesture.

The lectures encompass such main paradigms as blending and mental space theory, conceptual metaphor and metonymy, construction and cognitive grammars, image schemas, and mental simulation in relation to semantics. Overall, Alan Cienki shows that taking the usage-based commitment seriously with audio-visual data raises new issues and questions for theoretical models in cognitive linguistics.

The lectures for this book were given at The China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics in May 2013.