In early April 1989, the international “Cognitive Linguistics” movement was born. Probably not everyone knows that it has a precise birthday, so let me recount the event here from my own perspective – because, amazingly, I was an eyewitness as a student. And I interviewed the famous George Lakoff, together with another student.
I started my PhD officially in 1990, so I was technically only an M.A. student at the time, but I was already deeply interested in theoretical linguistics, and I wondered how I might navigate the field. In late March 1989, I had just submitted my M.A. thesis to the University of Cologne (now available on Zenodo), and I was preparing for my exams and for a six-month research stay at MGU in Moscow later in 1989. So when I heard about a fantastic international conference that was to take place in nearby Duisburg, organized by René Dirven, I decided to attend as a visitor without a presentation. Dirven was professor of English linguistics in Duisburg and had taken a keen interest in the work of Ronald Langacker and others who were starting to use the expression “cognitive linguistics” for their work. I had heard the expression for the first time in 1988 (from David Zubin, while I was an exchange student in Buffalo), but it was not widely known in 1989.
René Dirven was not a well-known linguist (but see Radden & Dirven (2007) for a cognitive grammar textbook), but he was a masterful organizer. He had organized a whole series of conferences (called “LAUD Symposia”, named after his “Linguistic Agency of the University of Duisburg”), and the 1989 event was technically the 14th LAUD symposium, but it also served as the founding event of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association (ICLA) – during the conference, we learned that we had actually attended the first International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC 1, March 28 – April 1, 1989). The theme was “Conceptualizations and mental processing in language” (see also the 1993 conference volume edited by Geiger & Rudzka-Ostyn).
For me, as a beginning PhD student, this was an amazing experience. Not only was this a conference featuring some very famous names as plenary speakers (George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker, Anna Wierzbicka, Wolfgang Dressler, Adrienne Lehrer), but I could actually witness the birth of a new movement. In addition to the association (ICLA) and the conference series (ICLC), the organizers also announced the foundation of a new journal (Cognitive Linguistics) and a new book series (Cognitive Linguistics Research). All of these initiatives have survived until this day.
At the time, I thought that this was the right approach, an impression reinforced by the fact that my esteemed teacher from my undergraduate years in Vienna, Wolfgang Dressler, was among the invited speakers. Moreover, I was fascinated by Anna Wierzbicka’s work on semantics that I knew about through Igor Mel’čuk’s classes (also in Vienna, back in 1983). Thus, I made sure to attend subsequent cognitive linguistics conferences (1991, 1995, 2001, and again 2015 and 2023). While I am no longer very sure that I know what “cognitive linguistics” is (are “constructions” cognitive entities? my answer was negative in 2023), and while I have become wary of community-based “approaches” (which sometimes sound like ideologies), I still find much of the work in the “cognitive linguistics” tradition very good (and probably on the right track).
But back in 1989, I was young and impressionable, and I was fascinated by George Lakoff (both his bold formulations and his markedly self-confident personality), who I had not met before. So when another student at the conference, Philip Brey, suggested that we ask Lakoff for an interview, to be published in a new magazine, I was very enthusiastic.
The magazine (or journal) was called “Languages of the World”, and was edited by a recent linguistics graduate from Munich, Ulrich Lüders (who had just founded a publishing company, LINCOM). It did not really take off (and died a few years later), but it published not only our interview (now here on Zenodo), but also a report of mine on the 1989 conference (also on Zenodo).
One striking aspect of what Lakoff said in the interview is the characterization of generative linguistics as unable to take a broader perspective because of a commitment to formal symbol manipulation (see also Lakoff 1991):
Back in 1989, I thought that Lakoff was right, but I no longer think so – generative linguists are probably simply more interested in formal systems than Lakoff and other cognitive linguists. In a way, we are all structuralists, and we are all constructionists, and the various approaches should be ultimately compatible.
After “Cognitive Linguistics”, the next big thing to come out of Berkeley was “Construction Grammar”, and Lakoff already hinted at it in the 1989 interview (though without mentioning Charles Fillmore and Paul Kay):
One of these students must have been Adele Goldberg, who later became well-known as a key figure in Construction Grammar.
References
Geiger, Richard A. & Rudzka-Ostyn, Brygida (eds.). 1993. Conceptualizations and mental processing in language. Mouton de Gruyter. (doi:10.1515/9783110857108)
Lakoff, George. 1991. Cognitive versus generative linguistics: How commitments influence results. Language and Communication 11(1/2). 53–62.
Radden, Günter & Dirven, René. 2007. Cognitive English Grammar (Cognitive Linguistics in Practice). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (https://benjamins.com/catalog/clip.2)
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Martin Haspelmath (April 8, 2026). Witnessing the birth of “Cognitive Linguistics” 37 years ago. Diversity Linguistics Comment. Retrieved April 15, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/161ac