The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 8. In the past decade, Cognitive Linguistics has developed into one of the most dynamic and attractive frameworks within theoretical and descriptive linguistics The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is a major new reference that presents a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical concepts and descriptive/theoretical models of Cognitive Linguistics, and covers its various subfields, theoretical as well as applied. | 40 TIM ROHRER 6. The Levels of Investigation Theoretical Framework In developing a broader theoretical framework for use in Cognitive Linguistics see table 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 processes. 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 experiments 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 methodologies used at that order of physical size. In order to preserve Posner and Raichle s insight that it is profitable to consider how the inquiries into similar questions change at various levels of investigation due to the constraints of the observational apparatus and method the Tasks .
