6. The ‘Levels of Investigation’
Theoretical Framework

In developing a broader theoretical framework for use in Cognitive Linguistics (see
table 2.1), I have made use of Posner and Raichle’s (1994) schematization of the
levels of investigation in cognitive science. The most basic organizing criterion of
this theoretical framework is the scale of the relative physical sizes of the phenomena
which produce the different kinds of social, cognitive, or neural events to be studied.
Physical size (expressed in meters) is mapped vertically in the rows of the table,
providing a relative distribution of the ‘‘higher to lower’’ levels of cognitive pro-
cesses. The first column presents examples of what the relevant physiological
structures are at a given physical scale, while I give a general name to each level of
investigation in the next column. For instance, at the communicative, cultural, and
social level, we primarily study language as it is used between people, and hence at a
physical size scale of roughly 1 m and up when we make observations as to the
emergence or frequency of a particular metaphor in a videotaped or written corpus,
and so on. Alternatively, it is possible to focus on a single individual’s performance
on linguistic tasks via measures which focus on the individual’s body, such as the
reaction time elapsed or the galvanic skin response conducted when the individual
reads an emotionally salient metaphor. Similarly, we could also conduct experi-
ments designed to measure either neuroanatomic regions or single-cell activity in
response to analogous linguistic tasks. Thus, I describe the level of investigation in
accordance with the kinds of cognitive processes measurable given the method-
ologies used at that order of physical size.
In order to preserve Posner and Raichle’s insight that it is profitable to con-
sider how the inquiries into similar questions change at various levels of investi-
gation due to the constraints of the observational apparatus and method, the
‘‘Tasks’’ column of this theoretical framework specifies for Cognitive Linguistics in
particular some typical relevant experimental or explanatory tasks. The next col-
umn lists some of the relevant theoretical constructs operative at each level of
investigation, while the final column presents some of the various methods used to

and cultural
systems in
anthropology,
language, science,
and philosophy
Uses of widespread
cultural metaphors in
interpersonal
communication;
syntactic and semantic
change
Complex conceptual
metaphor, conceptual
blends, disanalogy,
subjectification
Linguistic analysis,
cross-linguistic typology,
discourse analysis,
cognitive anthropology
.5 to 2 Central nervous
systems
Performance
domain: Cognitive,
conceptual,
gestural,
and linguistic
systems as
performed by
individual subjects
Understanding

(anterior
cingulate,
parietal lobe,
etc.)
Neural systems Activation course in
somatosensory,
auditory, and visual
processing areas when
processing conceptual
metaphor or
multimodal perceptual
experiences
Conceptual metaphor
mappings, primary
metaphor, conceptual
blends, disanalogy,
image schemas,
topological maps
Lesion analysis,
neurological dissociations,
neuroimaging with
fMRI and PET,
ERP methods,
neurocomputational
simulations
10
À2
to 10
À4
Neural

Fine neuroanatomical
organisation of
particular structures
recruited in lang.
processing
Orientation-tuning
cells; ocular
dominance columns
Electrocellular recording,
anatomical dyes,
neurocomputational
simulations
Less than 10
À6
Neuro-transmitters,
ion channels,
synapses
Subcellular
systems:
Subcellular,
molecular, and
electrophysical
None—beyond
theoretical scope
Neurotransmitter,
synapse, ion
channels
Neuro-pharmacology,
neurochemistry,
neurophysics

experientialist vein, Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995) critiqued Ko
¨
vecses’s research
as ahistorical and acultural, arguing that historical lexicography shows that these
metaphors have been inherited from the humoral theory of medieval Western
science. Yet their critique seems at least partially rebutted by several cross-cultural
analyses of the metaphors for anger in non-Indo-European languages, such as
Matsuki’s (1995) study of Japanese, where somewhat similar heated fluid meta-
phors have been found.
Note that this controversy, centering on the question of change across time
and culture, evokes the ‘‘universalist-relativist’’ philosophical debate on objectivity;
however, and as the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey (1917) noted,
such debates are notoriously unhelpful to the continued inquiry that characterizes a
genuine objectivity. A more pragmatic response might be to see these studies as the
result of using differing methodologies at different levels of investigation to study
the embodiment of anger. Applying this theoretical framework, we could seek to
identify questions which investigate multiple dimensions. We might then expand
the scope of the inquiry from the bodily and performative level of the framework to
embodiment and experientialism 43
the communicative and cultural level: Was the humoral theory also physiologically
motivated? Does this metaphor exist in any Indo-European linguistic evidence
which predates the appearance of humoral theory? Did the Japanese metaphor
arrive via Western contact, or did it emerge independently? And, to what extent
does the Japanese conceptualization rely on shared underlying conceptual meta-
phors such as the body is a container? Alternatively, a cognitive psychologist
might frame a further inquiry at the performative level by measuring, via reaction
times, heart rates, and/or skin temperature, whether Japanese and Indo-European
language speakers exhibit similar physiological responses to differing variants of this
metaphor. Or one might also measure whether subjects who were recently taught
humoral theory would be quicker to use (or comprehend) passages containing this

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CONSTRUAL AND
PERSPECTIVIZATION

arie verhagen
1. Introduction

A fundamental principle in Cognitive Linguistics is that semantics is, indeed, pri-
marily cognitive and not a matter of relationships between language and the world
(or truth conditions with respect to a model). This principle becomes especially
manifest in the research into facets of meaning and grammatical organization
which crucially makes use of notions such as ‘‘perspective,’’ ‘‘subjectivity,’’ or
‘‘point of view.’’ What these notions have in common is that they capture aspects
of conceptualization that cannot be sufficiently analyzed in terms of properties of
the object of conceptualization, but, in one way or another, necessarily involve a
subject of conceptualization. A strong incentive for this type of research stems
from the awareness that the more linguistic problems can be solved by making
use of these notions, the more (heuristically) successful the fundamental princi-
ple is; in addition, this research is motivated by the awareness that the best way
to make these notions relevant for linguistic analysis is not given a priori and
thus requires empirical investigation. It is therefore not surprising that there is in
fact quite a large body of research into such nonobjective facets of linguistic
meaning.
The cover term that has come to be used for different ways of viewing a par-
ticular situation is ‘‘construal.’’ At a very elementary level, construal is a feature of
the meaning of all linguistic expressions, if only as a consequence of the fact
that languages provide various ways for categorizing situations, their participants
and features, and the relations between them. Speaking thus always implies a
choice:
A speaker who accurately observes the spatial distribution of certain stars can

to a large increase in the number of known distinct construal operations. Therefore,
it is useful to consider a few more types of construal before considering the clas-
sification proposals. It should be evident, though, that this cannot be a compre-
hensive list of construal phenomena.
construal and perspectivization 49