Clearly the absence of a social dimension of mediation from L&J marks a
fundamental difference but I tend to side with Peter Jones who wrote "While
the two approaches differ, aguably irreconciliably, on key philosophical and
theoretical issues having to do with the source and role of ideas within the
social process, there is, possibly, scope for meaningful dialogue on the
analysis of the 'concept-material' from which theories and conceptual models
are constructed." In his work on the relation between CHAT and cognitive
linguistics (CL) he points to another key difference, beyond the issue of
the fundamentally social nature of thought and mind: the possibility of
objective knowledge. Objective knowledge, Peter writes, " . . . is not a
finished once-and-for-all-time state, but a process." A particular theory
does not constitute "the final and absolute truth of the matter. . . There
is a growing kernel of truth within the theory . . . a kernel that will
never be refuted." One thinks of Archimedes discovery of mass as a relation
between the weight and displacement of any material object. The kernel of
truth discovered there finds a fuller more adequate expression in the
periodic table that likewise will never be refuted. This isn't to say that
it won't be subsumed within another theory that accounts for the truth of
the periodic table as a special instance within a broader framework (as
Newton's laws are accounted within the framework of the theory of
relativity as laws that hold for objects moving at speeds much less than
the speed of light). Quite simply, that truth, objective truth, will never
be replaced. CL, like all neo-Kantian relativistic theories (by whatever
name), ultimately denies the possibility of such knowledge. CHAT ultimately
accepts that possibility.
So there are fundamental differences. I think these come more from the way
the discovery of something (e.g., ideal cognitive models or prototype
effects) is interpreted by those who discovered it. But, as Peter argues,
the CL approach with its emphasis on the "prototypical effects" of
metaphorical thought "can provide useful, auxiliary conceptual tools for
ideological analysis and critique." Lakoff's work (I haven't read the L&J
book) points to a material (metaphors derived from the experience of the
body) out of which sign systems are constructed and to a logic that inheres
in these materials. A metaphor for this would be something on the order of
Priestley's discovery of de-phlogistinated air (a concept derived from an
objectively untrue theory) and Lavoisier's incorporation of the same
discovery within the objective knowledge of the atomic theory of matter
(identification of oxygen).
And thanks Peter for sending me those papers I found them wonderful, exactly
what the doctor ordered for scratching the itch.
Paul H. Dillon
But importantly he points to the area of ideology as one in which there is a
possible convergence.