Briefly the lakoffian approach in my view is a rather typical neo-kantian
creation with a heavy dose of empiricism. human cognition begins with bodily
(sensori-motor) interaction with the world which creates 'concrete' cognitive
content which is then worked on by a variety of cognitive mechanisms (eg
metaphor etc) producing more and more 'abstract' knowledge (in the sense of
corresponding less and less to the real world). the result is a sceptical and
relativist epistemology. this is not to deny that there are interesting ideas
in the whole approach (and chris sinha is an enthusiastic Cog ling advocate who
is attempting in his work to make a synthesis of the CHAT tradition with Cog
ling).
i would be very interested to hear what others make of lakoff's work.
best wishes to all
p