5. The Appeal of Cognitive Linguistics

Cognitive Linguistics is definitely a success in terms of academic appeal. The ICLC conferences, to give just one example, have grown into major events with more than 500 attendees. The openness and flexibility of theorizing in Cognitive Linguistics probably contributes to its attractiveness: as we have stressed, Cognitive Linguistics is a building with many rooms, and it may thus draw the attention of researchers with diverse interests. We think, however, that more is at stake. We would like to argue that Cognitive Linguistics combines a number of tendencies that may also be found in other contemporary developments in theoretical linguistics and, by combining them, taps into the undercurrent of contemporary developments more than any other theoretical framework.

More specifically, while decontextualization appears to be a fundamental underlying characteristic of the development of grammatical theory in twentieth-

century linguistics, a number of current developments involve a recontextualization of grammar. And Cognitive Linguistics, we contend, embodies this recontextualizing tendency more than any other approach.