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This paper aims to present an outline of some major types of language contact and conflict situations encountered worldwide by making reference to two models of language policy: the rationalist model, which focuses on the ideological role of language such as English as an instrument for wider communication and education; and the romantic model, in which for example post-colonial English is generally perceived as a threat to the ecolinguistic situation in multi-ethnic and multilingual societies. First the notion of ‘conflict' will be situated within its socio-historical context with reference to Fishman's earlier harmony model and a critique thereof. Reference to various older types of language conflict situations in Europe (France, Wales, Spain) will show that communities and language planners alike made different uses of the two models in question, each with different outcomes for the various parties and language groups involved. Moving from the ‘inner circle' (Europe) to the ‘outer circle' of ‘exported' European languages (i.e. to the USA, Africa, India), it will be argued that language conflict often arises as a result of the imposition by European powers of one dominant language and the marginalisation or even neglect of indigenous languages. The paper concludes by suggesting that language conflict situations are not to be understood as mechanistic, self-fulfilling developments but rather as a complex result of ideological, attitudinal and policy-driven evaluations, measures and implementations . Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2007, 25(3): 303–317

The volume offers a number of representative papers on cognitive models that are invoked when people deal with questions of social identity, political and economic manipulation, and more general issues such as the genomic discourse. It demonstrates that the technical apparatus of cognitive linguistics can be used to analyze the various ways our conception of social reality is shaped by underlying cognitive and/or cultural models or patterns of thought, and also looks into how this is done. The new inroad the volume pursues is the deliberate and explicit orientation towards a cognitive sociolinguistics, or more generally, a cognitive semiotics.

The book elaborates one of Roman Jakobson's many brilliant ideas, i.e. his insight that the two cognitive strategies of the metaphoric and the metonymic are the end-points on a continuum of conceptualization processes. This elaboration is achieved on the background of Lakoff and Johnson's twodomain approach, i.e. the mapping of a source onto a target domain of conceptualization. Further approaches dwell on different stretches of this metaphor-metonymy continuum. Still other papers probe into the specialized conceptual division of labor associated with both modes of thought. Two new breakthroughs in the cognitive linguistics approach to metaphor and metonymy have recently been developed: one is the three-domain approach, which concentrates on the new blends that become possible after the integration or the blending of source and target domain elements; the other is the approach in terms of primary scenes and subscenes which often determine the way source and target domains interact.

A union of Cognitive Linguistics and Sociolinguistics was bound to happen. Both proclaim a usage-based approach to language and aim to analyse actual language use in objective ways. Whereas Sociolinguistics is by nature on the outlook forlanguage in its variety, CL can no longer afford to ignoresocial variation in language as it manifests itself in the usagedata. Nor can it fail to adopt an empirical methodology thatreflects variation as it actually occurs, beyond the limitedknowledge of the individual observer. Conversely, while CL canonly benefit from a heightened sensitivity to social aspects,the rich, bottom-up theoretical framework it has developed islikely to contribute to a much better understanding of themeaning of variationist phenomena. This volume brings together fifteen chapters written by prominent scholars testifying of rich empirical and theoretizing research into the social aspects of language variation. Taking a broad view on Cognitive Sociolinguistics, the volume covers three main areas: corpus-based research on language variation, cognitive cultural models, and the ideologies of sociopolitical and socio-economic systems.

The volume makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the intricate relationship between culture, body and language by focusing on conceptualizations of internal body organs in several languages. The studies explore how across various cultures internal body organs such as the heart have been used as the locus of conceptualizing feelings, thinking, knowing, etc. Such conceptualizations appear to be rooted in cultural systems such as ethnomedical and religious traditions. The volume engages with these themes using the analytical tools developed in cognitive linguistics and cognitive anthropology.

Dirven René. Metaphor and Ideology. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 68, fasc. 3, 1990. Langues et littératures modernes - Moderne taal- en letterkunde. pp. 565-575.