37. Lakoff’s view point on the classical theory of human categorization

Lakoff argued that categorization relates to idealized cognitive models (ICMs).These are relatively stable mental representations that represent ‘theories’ about the world. Moreover, ICMs guide cognitive processes like categorization and reasoning. Lakoff argues that typicality effects can arise in a range of ways from a number of different sources. One way in which typicality effects can arise is due to mismatches between ICMs against which particular concepts are understood.

Consider the ICM to which the concept bachelor relates. This ICM is likely to include information relating to the institution of marriage, and a standard marriageable age. It is with respect to this ICM, Lakoff argues, that the notion of bachelor is understood. Furthermore, because the background frame defined by an ICM is idealized, it may only partially match up with other cognitive models. This can therefore give rise to typicality effects.

Consider the Pope with respect to the category bachelor. While an individual’s status as a bachelor is an ‘all or nothing’ affair, because this notion is understood with respect to the legal institution of marriage, the Pope, while strictly speaking a bachelor, is judged to be a poor example of this particular category. Lakoff’s theory accounts for this sort of typicality effect as follows. The concept pope is primarily understood with respect to the ICM of the catholic church, whose clergy are unable to marry. Clearly, there is a mismatch between these two cognitive models. In the ICM against which bachelor is understood, the Pope is ‘strictly speaking’ a bachelor, because he is unmarried. However, the Pope is not a prototypical bachelor because the Pope is more frequently understood with respect to a catholic church ICM in which marriage of Catholic clergy is prohibited.

38. Notion of metonymic Idealized Cognitive Models

There are a number of other ways in which, according to Lakoff, typicality effects arise, by virtue of the sorts of ICMs people have access to. For instance, a typicality effect arises when an exemplar (an individual instance) stands for an entire category. The phenomenon whereby one conceptual entity stands for another is called metonymy, discussed later. Thus, typicality effects that arise in this way relate to what Lakoff refers to as metonymic ICMs.

An example of a metonymic ICM is the cultural stereotype housewife-mother, in which a married woman does not have paid work, but stays at home and looks after the house and family. The housewife-mother stereotype can give rise to typicality effects when it stands for, or represents, the category mother as a whole. Typicality effects arise from resulting expectations associated with members of the category mother. According to the housewife-mother stereotype, mothers nurture their children, and in order to do this they stay at home and take care of them. A working mother, by contrast, is not simply a mother who has a job, but also one who does not stay at home to look after her children. Hence, the housewife-mother model, by metonymically representing the category mother as a whole, serves in part to define other instances of the category such as working mother, which thus emerges as a non-prototypical member of the category.

Lakoff’s work on ICMs is important in a number of respects. For instance, it embodies the two key commitments of cognitive linguistics: the Generalization Commitment and the Cognitive Commitment. Lakoff took what was then a relatively new set of findings from cognitive psychology and sought to develop a model of language that was compatible with these findings. In attempting to model principles of language in terms of findings from cognitive psychology, Lakoff found himself devising and applying principles that were common both to linguistic and conceptual phenomena, which thus laid important foundations for the cognitive approach to language.