| Summary: | The aim of this article is both to expose some very serious objections raised by the theses of current cognitive semantics and to demonstrate, point by point, the superiority of a mediationist approach, ie. acknowledging the determining role of language in the development of human thought, both at individual and collective levels. Thus I refute the opinion, so often expressed in the works of cognitive semantics, according to which the only “alternative” to objectivism is a mentalist type experientialism. After an impartial presentation of the main propositions and major concepts of the Lakoff’s and Johnson’s semantics, I proceed to methodically assess them and to systematically expose the counter-propositions and counter-analyses that a mediationist approach inspires. In particular, a mediationist and non-objectivist reformulation is proposed for the model of necessary and sufficient conditions.
|
|---|