Construction Grammar Theory and ESL pedagogy (WORKING TITLE)

Running head: Construction Grammar Theory and ESL Grammar Teaching 1

Cognitive Construction Grammar Theory and

the Teaching of Grammar in the ESL Classroom

James J. Mischler, III

Northwestern State University of Louisiana


Cognitive Construction Grammar Theory and

the Teaching of Grammar in the ESL Classroom

Introduction

This article will propose recommendations for applying a specific theory of syntax,

Cognitive Construction Grammar Theory (hereafter, CCxG), to the teaching of grammar in the

English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom. Before presenting the recommendations, there

is another, more fundamental model of language structure, cognitive processing, and use that

underlies both CCxG and the ESL teaching pedagogical system employed here. That theory is

called the Usage-based Model of Language. The following section describes the model and its

connection to the recommendations provided later in this article.

The Usage-based Model

The most fundamental tenet of the model is the “intimate relation between linguistic

structures and instances of use of language” (Barlow & Kemmer, 2000, p. viii). This tight

relationship between a structure and its use is the basis for several other important principles.

Three of these principles of the model that speak to language education are presented below

(Barlow & Kemmer, 2000, p. xi):

1. The fundamental relationship between mental processing and linguistic structure.

2. The effects that language use have on language acquisition and learning.

3. The dynamic nature of the speaker/hearer’s linguistic system.

The first point concerns the comprehension and production of linguistic forms; the act of mental

processing during a conversation to both understand an interlocutor’s message and to produce

linguistic forms in response is a form of linguistic knowledge, part of the system of linguistic


knowledge that the speaker/hearer possesses. On this view, Barlow and Kemmer argue that

performance is a part of the speaker’s competence; they are not separate aspects of language, as

generative grammar theory contends. The second point is a direct result of the knowledge created

by language use, as Barlow and Kemmer explain:

“Since in a usage-based model instances of producing and understanding language are of

central importance to the structuring of the linguistic system, they must be especially

significant in the acquisition of language, when the system is in the process of taking

form” (2000, p. xi).

Language use promotes language learning because each usage event adds to and revises the

learner’s knowledge of the linguistic system and its schemas—the system increases in its

detailed knowledge of form and meaning through experience with the language. As well, the use

of the linguistic system within a particular speech community provides knowledge of the

pragmatic uses of language forms and meanings. In this way, language use supports and

increases knowledge in all three parts of non-autonomous knowledge described by the semiotic

triangle (Croft, 2008).

Finally, tying language use to language knowledge entails a dynamic linguistic system

that is constantly in flux, as new usage events add to and change the user’s knowledge of the

system and its use in the community. In second language acquisition research, this dynamic

quality of the non-native learner’s language knowledge in the target language is termed the

interlanguage system (Selinker, 1972); that is, the learner’s current performance in the second

language is placed on a relative continuum between L1 (native language) ability and L2 (second

language) ability. At the beginning of the learning process, the learner depends on the L1 for

knowledge of language and some knowledge of L2 is interpreted by the L1 knowledge (called


language transfer). L1 transfer can have either a positive effect on learning the L2, informing

better understanding of the L2, or a negative effect, interfering with L2 understanding. As the

learner gains knowledge and skill in the L2, the influence of the L1 on second language

performance gradually decreases. Interlanguage theory protrays language learning as a

developmental process, and any non-native speaker has a relative mix of abilities and educational

needs. The focus of the continuum is on the developmental trend of the learner’s knowledge and

performance in the target language

Though the interlanguage system and the usage-based model share some similarities, the

latter is unique in that it does not distinguish between native and non-native users of a language,

and there is no continuum of relative ability—all speakers of a language possess a dynamic

linguistic system that changes with use over time, and their relative ability compared to other

speakers is not an important factor. In this way, usage-based models do not differentiate between

various members of a speech community in terms of language ability; all members have a unique

mix of abilities and needs, based on their individual experience with language. This is an

important consideration in classroom activities that include both native and non-native speakers

as participants, a typical situation in English as a Second Language classrooms. In sum, usage-

based models provide a set of theoretical principles and constructs that can be applied usefully to

the discussion of second and foreign language learning.

Research in the Teaching and Learning of Language

The dynamic nature of a person’s linguistic knowledge described in usage-based theories

has also been an important component of recent theories and studies of language learning. Since

the 1990s, a growing number of psycholinguistic and classroom-based research studies have

begun to show the relationship between instruction and grammatical accuracy in second


language acquisition. Schmidt (2001), in a review of recent studies on student noticing of

linguistic form, argues that indirect (i.e., subliminal) learning does not occur:

The vast majority of studies do not show learning of anything new. I

have proposed a strong version of the ‘noticing hypothesis,’ a claim

that while there is subliminal perception, there is no subliminal

learning (p. 26).

For grammar in particular, Schmidt proposes that the productive use of a specific linguistic

structure requires grammatical parsing of the structure into its component parts, including

clauses, parts of speech, words, affixes, and meanings. He states, “...in order to acquire syntax

one must attend to the order of words and the meanings they are associated with” (p. 31). He

terms these linguistic structures constructions, which are accumulated by learners from input

through noticing. Over time, the recurring, form/meaning constructions are parsed

grammatically via noticing to yield their component parts, and the components can then be used

productively in new linguistic structures.

Schmidt’s proposal for the process of parsing recurring syntactic patterns through

systematic noticing of input is compelling, due to the numerous studies concerning the role of

attention in learning which he cites in his article. However, ESL educators have not yet

determined a pedagogical method for enacting the proposal in the classroom. Some researchers,

including Ellis (2001), recommend Focus on Form (cf. Doughty & Williams, 1998), which

promotes attention to grammar forma and meaning through consciousness-raising activities and

consistent corrective feedback from the teacher to help the student make associations between

grammatical form and meaning (Ellis, 2001, p. 64). In sum, Focus on Form (FoF) includes the

major processes of learning via noticing discussed by Schmidt.


However, in a critical review of FoF theory and practice, Poole (2005) argues that the

approach has some important limitations. He concluded that the method works best when the

class size is small enough to allow sufficient teacher attention to each student, and the class

members (including the teacher) must be proficient enough to employ English as the language of

instruction (p. 53). FoF is a useful instructional strategy when its emphasis on accuracy of form

and immediate feedback are not overwhelmed by classroom management issues. Overall, FoF

and other forms of language awareness focus on noticing but do not parse grammatical structures

in a way that promotes understanding of the relations between words and other structures within

a construction. The lack of understanding of the internal structure of a construction as well as

the separation of the construction from the background precludes the ability of the learner to use

the construction productively in communicative contexts.

A pedagogical method similar to FoF which is also employed currently in ESL

instruction is termed language awareness (cf. James & Garrett, 1995; van Lier, 1996, 2004). In a

recent grammar textbook which employs the method (Birch, 2005), learners are led through

several “interpretive and reflective” stages (Birch, 2005, p. 52) to notice, learn, and use a new

construction. The interpretive stages include initial noticing of a particular construction, then

representing the construction cognitively and storing it in memory, noticing the structure in a text

and discussing the form and meaning. The reflective stages include noticing the structure in

everyday language situations and thinking about appropriate style and use of the structure in

context (Birch, 2005, p. 52). Thus, the language awareness method parallels the noticing

hypothesis by attention “to the order of the words and the meanings they are associated with,” as

Schmidt envisioned it.


A limitation in the teaching curriculum shown in Birch’s book is that the method begins

at the level of the word and builds up to more complex clause constructions, which is the reverse

of Schmidt’s proposal for parsing complex structures into simpler ones. Birch also treats

complex constructions, such as subject-verb-object clauses, by first discussing subjects and verbs

as distinct concepts in isolation, separated from the constructions in which they occur and also

separated from the context in which meanings are situated in authentic language use. The

pedagogical sequence employed in Birch’s textbook is called the discrete-item syllabus and is

common in both traditional grammar texts and in the current communicative learning method.

However, the method has come under criticism. For example, Grundy (2004) argued that

“[w]hile the discrete-item-syllabus may enable learners to produce and

understand a range of structures, it seems to not work at any deep level,

seemingly because it presents language without a real context, and

therefore without the background in relation to which it is meaningful” (p.

123).

In the discrete item approach, the parsing task is made more difficult from the outset

because the grammatical relationships between words in a complex construction are not

presented until late in the learning process, if at all, and the lack of meaningful context eliminates

the background information needed to use the construction appropriately in authentic situations

(see also Lock, 1996).

Cognitive-Functional Linguistics and Language Pedagogy

In my view, the main weaknesses of the FoF and language awareness approaches are that

the methods address how to teach grammar but not what structures to teach, simply incorporating

the traditional discrete-item syllabus in the pedagogical theories without critically assessing the


usefulness of the teaching sequence. In addition, the methods also do not address the processes

of the mind, such as noticing and parsing, which affect language learning, comprehension, and

use. In short, FoF and language awareness do not explicitly include a theory of language or a

theory of cognition; yet, both types are needed to employ the results of research in noticing

discussed by Schmidt (2001) in language teaching pedagogy.

Cognitive-Functional (CF) Linguistics and Language Teaching

One sub-field of linguistics that incorporates both theories of language and theories of

cognition is Cognitive-Functional (CF) Linguistics. For example, Dirven (1989) and Taylor

(1993) proposed complete pedagogical grammars developed from CF principles. In addition, a

few researchers have studied several cognitive-linguistic approaches to teaching grammar in the

ESL classroom. First, studies of grammatical structures in English from a CF point of view, with

pedagogical implications of the results, were conducted by Langacker (2001) and by Tyler and

Evans (2001). Second, there are studies which begin with ESL pedagogy and incorporate CF

analyses of language to argue for the usefulness of CF for teaching grammar; these studies

include Grundy (2004), discussed above, Boers and Lindstromberg (2006), Niemeier (2004), and

Littlemore and Low (2006). These studies, applying principles of CF to classroom grammar

pedagogy, are discussed in turn, beginning with Langacker’s article.

Langacker (2001) found that the traditional assumption that the present tense is not a true

tense is incorrect—the grammatical structure semantically places the action at the time of

speaking, a clear indication of time from the speaker’s subjective point of view. The

pedagogical implication of the results is that “the traditional way of looking at tense, even in

linguistics, engenders confusion” because speaker point of view and other subjective aspects of


meaning are ignored (p. 37). Langacker concluded that the analysis of natural language data

from a cognitive linguistics point of view could usefully inform the teaching of grammar.

A study that supported Langacker’s conclusion concerning the usefulness of CF for

grammar pedagogy was done by Tyler and Evans (2001). In a study of English tense, the

researchers found that tenses are often employed to express non-temporal functions; for example,

the past tense in English can communicate distance (either physically or socially) between the

speaker and another person, object, or event (cf. Littlemore & Low, 2006, pp. 166-167). This

“reanalysis” of tense to express distance by native speakers in English provides additional

functional uses of tense; Tyler and Evans argue that these functions include the projection of

intimacy, the saliency (i.e., the ability to be noticed) of an object or event, actuality (i.e.,

truthiness), and politeness. Though the study showed the importance of non-temporal uses of

tense in English for important communicative purposes, the authors note that the non-temporal

constructions are rarely presented in ESL textbooks, and when they are provided the form is

characterized as atypical and therefore simply needs to be memorized (Tyler & Evans, 2001, p.

97). Thus, the CF analysis brought out significant features of language that ESL pedagogy

routinely ignores. The researchers concluded that “[w]e believe that insights from cognitive

linguistics have real merit in offering more systematic, motivated accounts of how English

works” (p. 98). Yet, Tyler and Evans acknowledge that the analyses offered in their study are

not suitable for a language classroom; they recommend further research to design appropriate

materials which take advantage of cognitive linguistic analyses1.

1 An alternative approach is Churchill et al. (2010), which investigates the teaching of grammar employing the

sociocognitive approach developed by Dwight Atkinson (2002). The approach draws on work by Hutchins (1995,

2005) but differs from CF principles in several respects. However, it is situated specifically in teacher/student

dialogue that occurs in the second language classroom and in one-to-one tutoring. The approach may provide

concepts and techniques that aid the application of CF constructs and principles to classroom.


Analyses of language teaching pedagogy from a Cognitive Linguistics (CL) point of view

have identified more specifically the ways in which the field may inform teaching practice.

Grundy (2004), cited previously, discussed the problems inherent in the discrete-point syllabus.

In addition, he applied the figure-ground gestalt, a concept in CL, to the learnability of language.

A major point of Grundy’s article is that a construction (i.e., the figure) cannot be separated from

the context in which it is situated (i.e., the ground) because it is the grounding of the construction

in discourse which allows the meaning of the construction to be recovered by the hearer.

Grounding is found in metapragmatic discourse structures, including discourse markers, such as

even (Grundy, 2004, p. 126). Grundy concludes that “[t]he point is that language structures

crucially depend on, just as visual objects do, on the background which shows their salience” (p.

138). He recommends further research to delineate the relationship between language, context,

and the learner. However, Grundy’s article was an essay which was limited to the figure /

ground gestalt and its implications for contextualized language teaching and learning. In

contrast, Boers and Lindstromberg (2006) conducted a broad survey of CF theory and its

applications to language teaching, showing that the field can provide insights in many diverse

areas of pedagogy, such as lexical polysemy (i.e., multiple meanings for one word), prepositions

and phrasal verbs, idioms, reading comprehension, and cultural awareness. The researchers have

a section devoted to the teaching of grammatical constructions, and they conclude that “...a

considerable number of appealing proposals for CL-inspired pedagogical grammar have been put

forward in recent years” (Boers & Lindstromberg, 2006, p. 332), but studies of the effectiveness

of these ideas have not yet been undertaken.

Niemeier (2004) reviewed eight current trends in second language teaching theories,

including language awareness, FoF, intercultural competence, autonomous learning, multi-


channel learning (e.g., learning styles), holistic learning, action-oriented teaching, and discourse-

based approaches, and suggests that the underlying principles in these trends are congruent with

important tenets in CL, especially the idea that “language, culture, and thought are inextricably

intertwined” (p. 95). Niemeier argues that fundamental CF concepts, such as prototypicality,

could be applied to grammar teaching (cf. Dirven, 1989). Prototypicality is the idea that there

are typical exemplars of objects, ideas, and events in a culture, and these prototypes are the ones

referenced in communication. For example, in American culture the robin is the prototypical

bird in a person’s mind because it is common to the North American geographical region. Thus,

when an American English speaker uses the word “bird” in a sentence, an American English

listener would think of the robin; conversely, in Germany, the listener would think of the

sparrow because it is the typical bird in that region. The differences in experiential knowledge

lead to differences in linguistic expression and, in cross-cultural communication, lead to different

understandings.

Crucially, prototypicality is a mental process (cf. Grundy, 2004); therefore, it applies to

any entity perceived in everyday experience, including non-physical objects such as grammatical

structures. Niemeier (2004) specifically discusses the teaching of the English progressive

syntactic form as a prototype; after that, the learner is able to perceive the ways in which the

construction is changed or extended to meet different communicative needs (p. 107). Niemeier

concludes that the teaching of prototypes and the noticing of extensions fits both CF principles

and the FoF/language awareness approaches to grammar pedagogy.

However, an important caveat must be stated here: the pedagogical sequence of learning

a prototype before its extensions must be employed with care. Littlemore and Low (2006), in

one chapter of the book, explore abstract thinking (i.e., metaphoric thinking) and its application


to learning grammar. In the section on teaching deontic and epistemic modal verbs, the authors

point out a problem of the prototype-extension teaching sequence--both the prototype and an

extension can be encountered in a single text, and so learners will be forced to interpret both,

whether both have been taught or not (Littlemore & Low, 2006, p. 169). Therefore, teachers

must not assume that a specified pedagogical sequence is always available (or desirable) in

instruction, especially when using authentic materials with the full situational context. The

complexity of authentic texts can render a pre-selected teaching sequence moot.

In sum, the studies discussed above indicate that CF has the potential to contribute

significantly to meet the learning needs for noticing a construction, parsing the structure

syntactically and semantically, and employing the structure appropriately in a communicative

context. The next section discusses a specific theory in CF for its application to the teaching of

grammar.

Construction Grammar as a theoretical base for grammar instruction

Goldberg (1992, 1995, 1998, 2006, 2010) is a CF researcher whose work is especially

applicable to ESL grammar instruction. She has developed a theory of syntactic structure which

accounts for the cognitive-processes of the mind and their relationship to linguistic constructions,

called cognitive construction grammar (2006, p. 214), or CCxG. Goldberg’s paradigm offers a

systematic, theoretical view of how language is parsed cognitively and used productively in

authentic, communicative situations. Construction grammar theory has been in existence over 20

years, beginning with an article by Fillmore, Kay, and O’Connor (1988). Significantly, Fillmore,

et al. employed the historical meaning of “construction” from traditional teaching grammars as a

fundamental theoretical construct in their theory of constructions. In the Fillmore, et al. sense, a

construction is a combination of parts of speech in a particular linear order which operates as a


single unit and includes both required and optional syntactic structures. Their proposal is based

on a CF analysis of a variety of constructions associated with the phrase let alone. While

Fillmore, et al. did not explicitly study the application of constructions to teaching pedagogy, the

grounding of their theory in teaching grammars affords a means to develop specific applications

for grammar pedagogy.

Goldberg early work in CCxG (1992) employs the Fillmore, et al. concept, investigating

the English ditransitive construction. The ditransitive had been studied previously by a group of

generative grammar linguists, who explained the apparent idiosyncratic semantics of the

ditransitive by devising rules for the use of the construction, via semantic classes of verbs which

were licensed to employ the construction. Goldberg systematically demonstrates the weaknesses

in the rules devised to explain ditransitive semantics, and instead applies Fillmore, et al.’s

analysis with the result that the construction theory accounts for the specific behavior of

ditransitives better than the generative rules; thus, in Goldberg’s analysis, the meaning of the

ditransitive construction is not idiosyncratic, as the generative linguists argued, but systematic

and predictable in most cases. For example, one finding of Goldberg’s analysis is that the

ditransitive “first object” requires a willing recipient in order to be used appropriately. The first

object (the recipient) is the receiver of the subject’s (the agent) action, often through the

transference of an inanimate object (the second object or theme). Goldberg found that some

sentences, such as (1) below, were anomalous because the recipient did not consent to the

transfer.

(1) *Sally burned Joe some rice.

Goldberg states that the example “...is unacceptable even if malicious intentions are attributed to

Sally; however, it is acceptable in the context that Joe is thought to like burned rice” (Goldberg,


1992, p. 61). The example indicates that the subjective nature of meaning construction, often

missing in ESL textbooks, is important to communicative meaning. As Tyler and Evans (2001)

pointed out, knowing Sally’s malicious intent (i.e., her subjective point of view) is necessary to

understand the meaning of the utterance (page number??). In addition, the willing recipient

constraint explains the semantic meaning of the construction as well as the use of the ditransitive

in discourse. Thus, Goldberg showed that, contrary to previous conclusions arguing for the

idiosyncratic nature of the construction, the ditransitive is employed systematically in discourse

to communicate point of view and intentionality.

The main theoretical tenet of construction grammar, compared to generative linguistics

theory, is to place semantic meaning within the construction itself, rather than in the lexical verb

classes that are applied to the construction. Thus, the construction retains the same meaning

when different verbs are inserted. Goldberg (1995) demonstrates that a construction has a

meaning of its own, apart from the lexical items used in a specific context. This principle

accounts for the necessity of learning constructions in ESL, as Schmidt (2001) points out—

without knowledge of the construction and its meaning, the structure will be used inappropriately

by the learner.

CCxG and Previous Research in Language Learning

Waara (2004) takes Goldberg’s construction grammar theory, as well as the conclusions

of Langacker (2001), Tyler and Evans (2001), Gundy (2004), Boers and Lindstromberg (2006),

and Niemeier (2004) discussed previously, to their logical conclusion and shows the learning

outcomes of noticing, parsing, and using a construction in context. In an experimental study

design, Waara collected oral language data from a speaking test of English native-speaker

adolescents (14-15 years old) and Norwegian non-native English-speaking adolescents. The two


groups were compared on four test tasks: 1) telling a story; 2) a two-minute speech on a

participant-selected topic; 3) giving instructions to another participant; and 4) providing

directions to another participant. All of the participants did all of the tasks.

The analysis procedure compared, through frequency analysis, the English native speaker

use of get to Norwegian native speaker use of the word. Waara concluded that the constructions

within which get occurs in native speaker English were learned by the non-native speakers;

however, some of the usages were non-native like due to learners treating the construction as a

“composite whole”; thus, “the learners have mastered the construction level better than specific

lexical items” (p. 72). The result suggests that the non-native English learners had not yet fully

parsed the construction grammatically and semantically. This implication of Waara’s work

supports Schmidt’s (2001) conclusion that parsing starts at the level of a construction to identify

simpler structures within it, such as words, and, that knowledge of a construction and its meaning

is necessary for appropriate use. Overall, these studies indicate that constructions are used by

both native-speaking and non-native speaking language users and learners, lending support to the

assertion that constructions should be learned in order to use them appropriately in

communication.

Linguistic Metaphors are Constructions

The remainder of this article concerns the application of CF and CCxG theoretical

principles to second language teaching and learning of metaphorical expressions. In this

proposal, linguistic metaphors are counted as constructions in the sense of Goldberg’s CCxG

model, and this analysis is supported by a previous study of conceptual metaphor: Sullivan

(2007) analyzes linguistic metaphors motivated by conceptual frames and argues that the

metaphors are constructions. The study found that “conceptually autonomous slots in


constructions tend to be filled with items that tend to evoke the target domain, while the

conceptually dependent slots are the ones reserved for source domain items” (p. 476), indicating

that constructions are part of the patterning of cognitive conceptualizations in metaphoric

utterances. Sullivan concludes that constructions are used systematically to produce linguistic

metaphors. For these reasons, in this volume, linguistic metaphors are constructions of

form/meaning pairs, following Goldberg’s formulation.

Summary

To conclude the section, Goldberg’s construction grammar theory captures aspects of the

cognitive processes of language comprehension and learning that purely methodological theories

of language learning do not. In addition, the problems inherent in the discrete-point syllabus are

mitigated by the focus on linguistic structure in discourse, preserving the context which is lost

when the structure is separated from the communicative situation. As well, the theory explicitly

combines cognition with cultural models (i.e., cultural units in Goldberg’s (2010) terminology).

Finally, any theory of language selected to inform language teaching pedagogy should inform

both the what and the how of teaching. Focus on Form and the language awareness approach

clearly describe how to teach, but they do not describe what should be taught. Cognitive

Construction Grammar provides both of these important aspects of second language pedagogy

(Holme, 2010, p. 118). In sum, linguistic metaphor does employ constructional

form/meaning/shared knowledge patterns, providing a theoretical basis for applying CCxG to the

teaching of metaphor.

The next section provides two examples of the application of construction grammar

principles to second language teaching. The first is as study of teaching a generalized

grammatical construction, verb aspect in Spanish, to English native-speaker graduate assistants


(Blyth, 1997); the second study discusses the teaching of several specific types of constructions,

including some which contain metaphoric language (Holme, 2010). The first study is contributes

to Foreign Language Acquisition (FLA) research, and the second applies to Second Language

Acquisition (SLA) research. Each study is discussed in turn.

Examples: Construction Grammar Theory in the second language classroom

Blyth (1997)

The study applied the construction grammar approach to a classroom setting for teaching

a specific grammatical construction. The purpose was to train native English-speaking

university graduate assistants (who taught Spanish as a foreign language) to teach verb aspect in

Spanish. In the article, Blyth reviews the current state of grammar teaching, and concludes his

literature review, like Gundy (2004), that the focus on decontextualized, discrete items is

ineffective for learning. Instead, Blyth adopts a constructivist approach that “integrates research,

theory, and practical experiences through informed, critical reflection” (p. 56), echoing the FoF

and language awareness teaching methods (see the Introduction). The approach involves

teaching the TAs studying aspect in contextualized examples from authentic texts, in order to

understand the use of aspect in discourse.

Blyth includes eight specific steps in the teaching method (Blyth, 1997, pp. 60-62).

These are outlined below.

1. Challenging the students “received wisdom” concerning aspect in Spanish.

2. Using visualization techniques to establish a link between linguistic structure and

aspect.

3. Discuss the grammatical structure in terms of its use in foregrounding or

backgrounding parts of a narrative.


4. Read authentic texts (e.g., newspaper articles); the students mark the verbs that

advance the story and verbs that do not.

5. Students tell a personal story in which they must choose which details to

foreground and background.

6. Students watch a 60-second video of a narrative and write down the story in their

own words. The class compares the narratives “to see how real-world events are

perceived by different narrators” (p. 61) and the effect on the narrative itself.

7. The students read narratives of the video written by native Spanish speakers and

the ways in which native speakers foreground/background the story.

8. Informed reflection is used to identify underlying concepts about language

learning.

The method was designed for advanced learners in foreign language acquisition (FLA), but many

principles discussed in the literature review are employed in Blyth’s method, including figure /

ground (via foreground / background), contextualized examples, linguistic analysis, and focused

reflection.

The study found that, as a result of the method, the TAs develop “central organizing

principles” that aid the learners to view “grammar as a mental strategy for the processing of

discourse” (p. 62). In addition, the TAs see how different texts affect learning; for example,

Blyth discusses the weaknesses of using cloze passages to teach grammar. Since cloze passages

are “mediated by someone else’s subjectivity and thus are inherently problematic” (p. 62).

Finally, the use of visualization techniques (Step #2) and video narratives shows the importance

of employing a variety of input modes to accompany written texts in teaching—text, visuals,

music, sounds and other modalities. Blyth states that “learners may establish their own pragmatic


mappings between the visual concepts of figure and ground, the discourse concepts of

foreground and background, and the grammatical concepts of perfectivity and imperfectivity” (p.

62). Thus, visual information is necessary for learners to understand the connection between

foreground/background and narrative events. This conclusion supports Eerden’s (2009)

contention that metaphor must be studied in multiple modes to be understood. In the end,

language learners “must consciously experience narration in order to envision aspect as both a

formal system and as a process for creating meaning” (Blyth, 1997, p. 62). This conclusion

supports the embodied nature of language learning, both as a cognitive process and a system of

shared knowledge in the classroom.

Holme (2010)

The study asserts that the specific formulation of construction grammar can provide both

the what (content) and the how (method) for teaching language forms. The content is determined

by the specific definition of construction employed, and the method is informed by “embodied

cognition which the form and meaning of the symbolic complex have been fashioned and

through which they will be learnt” (p. 117).

To illustrate these principles, Holme uses the construct of the “lexico-grammatical

continuum” (p. 117). A construction on the lexical end of the continuum is simply a group of

words, each of which has its own individual meaning; in this case, this lexical construction is

filled by specific words and is fixed in form or non-compositional. At the grammatical end of the

continuum, a construction (for example, the mononstransitive construction in English) is a

schema that specifies an agent, a patient, and a verb (or a process, in Langacker’s (1987) terms).

This grammatical construction can be filled with a wide variety of lexical items to provide a

precise meaning for the construction; the construction is variable in form or compositional. The


lexico-grammatical continuum is used in the study to show how the compositionality of

constructions can be approached pedagogically.

For example, teaching the word pairs heavy traffic and busy road as partially

compositional and partially non-compositional (Holme, 2010, pp. 120-122) may help language

learners to avoid using the word pair heavy road, which is an anomalous form, due to its

ambiguous meaning (and zero instances of use in the British National Corpus). Holme

recommends using pictures which illustrate the meaning of the separate words and the two

conventional pairings to teach the meanings of the constructions via embodied experience. For

example, a picture of a man carrying a large box (p. 121) in the center of a poster of various

pictures employing the word “heavy” identifies the force of gravity inherent in carrying a heavy

object. From the central picture, other pictures illustrating the metaphorical use of the meaning of

“heavy”—heavy traffic, heavy weather, heavy smoker, political heavyweight, and heavy taxation.

These illustrations provide the metaphorical uses of the term in various word pairs. Holme

argues that both the meanings of individual words and their compositional word pair meanings

can be taught effectively, using the principle of embodied experience that is part of the learner’s

intersubjective experience in the world.

The two studies by Blyth (1997) and Holme (2010) illustrate useful pedagogical methods

for employing CCxG theory to teach verb aspect in Spanish and word pair meaning in English,

respectively. Each study provides important insights into how the theory can be incorporated

systematically into principled approaches to teaching features of the target language to second

language learners. Both studies also use a multimodal approach to language, employing

visualization techniques and videos (Blyth, 1997) and pictures and graphics (Holme, 2010) to

help students to understand the meanings of the constructions under study. For these reasons,


these studies are ground-breaking applications, among the first to apply of construction grammar

theory to classroom language teaching.

The Blyth study does not explicitly take into account the effect of shared common ground

on the comprehension and production of the constructions, but the Holme study does factor in

some aspects of cultural knowledge. For example, in the Holme (2010) study, students are told

that word pairs like political heavyweight reflect shared community knowledge of sports,

especially boxing, in which a competitor has to “fight” opponents through elections and debates

to maintain political power. The connection between the word pair and non-autonomous

knowledge of boxing found in the speech community is important to the meaning of the word

pair; without understanding that aspect, the meaning of the phrase may be misunderstood or

misused (Littlemore, 2003). Yet, Holme does not employ cultural models—systems of cultural

knowledge—as defined here. As previously discussed, all constructions, metaphorical or not,

employ cultural units, so teaching any construction requires attention to the cultural models that

inform the specific meaning of the construction (Goldberg, 2010).

Situational context for understanding the meaning of a metaphoric expression. Blythe

does consider this factor by placing the constructions to be learned in an extended narrative

discourse. Holme (2010) also acknowledges the importance of context, but states that context is

sometimes overemphasized, discouraging students from trying out a metaphor in different

contexts as extendable semantic categories (p. 128). I agree that exploring the use, even playing

with, a linguistic form in various contexts is a useful learning strategy (Mischler, 2008);

however, Holme assumes that conceptualizations are wholly static, rather than simultaneously

static and dynamic, and that exploration is not the natural state of the language learning process.

On the contrary, the nature of conceptualization, as well as the often experimental and playful


qualities of language learning itself, leads naturally to the exploration of various meanings in

different situational contexts. I argue that context is necessary for understanding the meaning of

a linguistic expression, and a meaning is necessary to extending the semantic category to other

contexts. Therefore, contextual information needs to be provided when learning a new

metaphoric construction.

Summary

To summarize this section, instruction and learning in ESL requires noticing a form and

its associated meaning and parsing the construction syntactically and semantically, according to

numerous studies cited by Schmidt (2001). However, current theories of learning in ESL,

including Focus on Form and language awareness, do not address critical aspects of cognitive

processes and language structure which are crucial to develop pedagogical approaches for

learning a grammatical structure. In contrast, cognitive-functionalism as a field studies the

interface between cognition and language, and construction grammar theory (Goldberg, 1992;

1995; 2006; 2010) specifically addresses the issue of parsing a construction needed to learn the

attendant form and meaning. Studies by Langacker (2001), Tyler and Evans (2001), Boers and

Lindstromberg (2006), Niemeier (2004), and Waara (2004) provide evidence for these points.

Finally, the pedagogical critiques by Gundy, (2004), Littlemore and Low (2006), Blyth (1997),

and Holme (2010) suggest a specific strategy of combining detailed linguistic analyses and

concomitant pedagogical design to develop lessons for teaching and learning constructions,

including metaphor, which take into account the insights gained from CF and construction

grammar theory. However, none of the studies in language education discussed here specifically

take into account the effect of cultural models on the meaning and interpretation of


constructions, including metaphorical constructions. This important issue is discussed in the next

section.

Noticing, Frequency, and Explicit Teaching

The conceptual unity of cognition and cultural models implies that linguistic

constructions, including metaphorical constructions, cannot be understood or used appropriately

if the cultural models that inform the conceptualization are not included as part of the semantics

of the form. This conclusion helps to explain the results of the studies presented in the previous

section, in which some aspects of the target form are not learned and/or are misinterpreted by the

learner. Three more studies of noticing, input frequency, and explicit teaching are discussed

briefly below to offer further evidence that cultural models are needed to comprehend metaphor.

Littlemore (2009) discusses two studies and compares them for their implications

concerning the effects of variables on learning constructions. The first study, Casenhiser and

Goldberg (2005), investigated constructional learning for native-speaking English children.

Three groups were given a video task to learn a new (nonce form) construction. The verbs used

in one group were distributed equally among the video vignettes, in a second group a particular

verb was heard more often (skewed input), and in the third (control) group, the videos did not

include sound to hear the verb forms. The study found that the group which heard the same verb

more often learned the construction at a higher level than the equal distribution group or the

control group. The researchers concluded that associating a new construction with the same verb

aids learning.

However, Nakamura (2008), which replicated the Casenhiser and Goldberg (2005) study

to see if the same result would be found for non-native speaker English learners, did not find that

the construction was learned more easily if the same verb is used. For some reason, the second


language students had more trouble learning the construction, regardless of the frequency of the

verb form. Nakamura suggests that the finding can be attributed to individual differences among

the participants in the study concerning input sensitivity. Other possibilities explored by

Littlemore (2009) include the atypical use, pedagogically speaking, of skewed input for adult

learners and the higher frequency of non-prototypical forms, causing high-frequency,

prototypical forms to have a lower cue validity. In fact, Littlemore argues that second language

learners in general receive input that has low cue validity (2009, p. 182). In the end, the

frequency of the input is not a panacea for learning; Littlemore argues that noticing the input is

the most important factor, as Schmidt (2001) argued.

The question then becomes, how do students notice a construction in the input?

Considering the Casenhiser and Goldberg (2005) and the Nakamura (2008) studies, Littlemore

(2009) concludes that students may need explicit guidance from teachers to notice a new or

pedagogically important form and to understand its meaning. Littlemore and Low (2006) suggest

that teacher-led intervention is an important factor for learning, particularly for learning

metaphor (p. 28). There are many ways that teachers can help students to notice a construction,

including input enhancement (use of special type in printed texts to mark off a target form for

learning), explicit teaching of the appropriate theoretical constructs (e.g., teach conceptual

metaphor or construction to inform the learners’ study), and/or providing basic senses of words

to help students in their comprehension of metaphoric senses of the words. All of these teacher-

led techniques have been found to be useful in research studies, but all have weaknesses and

none were found to be useful in every case (Littlemore & Low, 2006, pp. 28-31). Noticing and

frequency of the input are necessary factors in language learning, but they are not sufficient in


themselves for learning to take place. The best practice is to choose a technique to meet a

particular learning objective for a particular group of students.

As an example, the second technique, teaching learners explicitly the theoretical

constructs involved in a construction or metaphor, would seem to be the most helpful when the

objective is to reduce the “black box” of metaphorical patterns and make visible what is invisible

to the untrained eye, as well as increase learner autonomy so that the student can identify

metaphor independently (Beréndi, Csábi, & Kövecses, 2008, p. 82). Yet, in the Berendi, et al.

study, in which the experimental group was given a brief lesson on conceptual metaphor prior to

the metaphor interpretation task, the researchers found that the CM lesson aided short-term and

long-term memory of the metaphors but was “not sufficient to turn metaphor awareness into a

(conscious) learning strategy that could contribute to learner autonomy” (p. 78). That is, the

students did not find CM theoretical constructs useful for organizing linguistic metaphors into

systematic conceptual categories. One student organized the English metaphors according to the

equivalent Hungarian proverb (p. 78), an application of shared cultural knowledge to organize

the metaphors rather than embodied experience.

The reasons for this result may stem from several factors; MacArthur (2010) discusses

some of these. First, CM theory is not yet developed fully with sufficient research results to

support its claims; employing theoretical constructs that are still in flux scientifically is difficult

and uncertain, even for classroom teachers who have training in the theory. Second, theoretical

terminology (i.e., metalanguage; MacArthur, 2010, p. 162) can be a barrier to students who are

still learning basic lexical items in the target language. Finally, many conceptual metaphors need

to be identified and described adequately before they can be taught adequately. These issues

show that teaching CMT to second language learners presents several challenges that must be


addressed to develop a teaching activity that is useful to learners. The main challenge taken up

by this volume is to include cultural models as part of the explicit teaching of linguistic

metaphors. Three general methods are in this area are presented in the next section.

Recommendations for the Second Language Classroom

There are many teaching methods and activities that can be employed to help students to

become aware of the shared cultural content of metaphoric constructions, limited only by the

teacher’s creativity. The possibilities cannot be exhausted in this volume and such a goal is

beyond the scope of this study; however, teaching possibilities will be discussed in general terms

to provide ideas and serve as a starting point for designing lessons. These possibilities are

organized under three general headings, which are related to construal operations—frames and

experiential scenes—and to the use of multimodal forms of metaphor mentioned previously in

this paper. Each of these general techniques are discussed in turn.

Frames

Frames as discussed here represent the general products of construal (i.e., cognitive

conceptualization of human experience in the world) which in various CF theories have different

but related names—domain, base, CM, frame, and ICM. I chose to use frame (ICM is also

appropriate here; see Goldberg, 2010) for this discussion because the construct is based on the

construal of a particular word in a particular conceptualized situation. From a learner’s point of

view (particularly low proficiency learners), starting at the level of the word is straightforward

and does not require knowledge of special theoretical terminology. In addition, frames also

contain cultural models which inform the construal of meaning (Barcelona, 2010, p. 148)2.

Finally, frames are used extensively in Goldberg’s CCxG theory to account for the semantics of

2 Barcelona specifically recommends explaining “culture-specific cognitive models (frames, scripts)”; while the

discussion focuses on teaching metonymy, the technique can be extended to metaphor.


a construction. In sum, the frame construct has several benefits for the discussion of second

language learning techniques. Frames are useful as a general strategy to help students notice a

particular lexical item/construction, to serve as exemplars for explicit instruction in CCxG and

CM, and to identify the basic and extended senses of a word. As an example of the first

objective—noticing a particular lexical item or construction—the restaurant frame is discussed

below.

The restaurant frame is a cognitive construct that organizes concepts, words, linguistic

expressions, the experiential scene(s), and related cultural models into a system of conceptual

relations. Linguistic utterances are then employed to express the relations. All of these relations

can be noticed with guidance from detailed information provided by the teacher. For example,

extended discourse in the form of a narrative can provide the detailed information needed to

make explicit many of the relations between the various words and concepts in the frame. A

narrative about a restaurant waiter who is waiting on several different customers over the course

of her day at work can make explicit a large number of lexical items, such as menu, entrée, side

dish, check, and tip; linguistic expressions or constructions, such as please be seated; metonymic

and metaphoric constructions, such as the metaphoric constructions eggs over easy and hold the

onions, and the metonym, The ham sandwich wants his check; and, cultural models and

practices, such as the “ordering a meal” script (see next section)—making a reservation, being

seated, reading the menu, ordering food, dinner conversation, eating/drinking conventions, and

paying the bill and tipping. All of these constructs are contained in the restaurant frame, and each

can be made explicit via the narrative, depending on the objectives of a particular lesson.

Many techniques can be used to study various aspects of the frame in the classroom—

reading a narrative (as shown in the Blyth (1997) study), studying expressions for their embodied


concepts (Holme, 2010), discussing social practices in the narrative and the cultural models that

motivate them, and a wide variety of others. Frames, their attendant constructs, the conceptual

relations attendant between constructs, and cultural models employed to interpret linguistic

expressions, provide a systematic and rich set of cognitive relations to explore the conceptual

unity of embodiment and shared cultural knowledge. By the use of the frame construct as a

pedagogical technique and with guidance from the instructor, learners will learn about and

comprehend the conceptual content of the frame more deeply and with better understanding of

the meanings of various conceptualizations within the frame.

Experiential Scenes

The experiential scene is the cognitive schema for a real-world experience that has been

conceptualized after many repetitions of a specific scene by the individual experiencer. The

scene is the embodied basis for all construal operations, including the frame and ICM, so it is

ubiquitous for the process of conceptualization. Both Conceptual Metaphor Theory and

Cognitive Construction Grammar recognize the presence of the experiential scene for the

purposes of construal and the instantiation of CMs and grammatical constructions. For these

reasons, the scene is a natural locus for studying the meaning and use of metaphoric

constructions in a second language.

The scene is a part of the semantic frame of an utterance (see previous section), so

contextualizing the scene within the frame will provide conceptual and semantic information that

an isolated instance of the metaphoric construction alone will not provide. Again, as was

discussed with frames, context is important for understanding the scene. Using the restaurant

frame discussed previously as an example, the introduction and exploration of the scene are

presented below.


The restaurant frame contains a variety of scenes that can be the focus of language study.

The scene I will call “the order” also includes a short script for ordering a meal. The basic

sequence of the script in American English is shown below.

The “Ordering a Meal” Script

1. The customer sits down at a table and reads the menu. 2. The waiter asks if the customer is ready to order. 3. If “Yes,” the customer orders a meal.

4. The waiter takes the order to the kitchen.

5. The customer waits for the food to arrive.

There are several ways to employ the restaurant frame and the above script to learn about related

conceptualizations, including cultural models. The methods mentioned in the section on frames

would also work here, such as studying specific constructions—order and menu, the scene-

related concept of waiter, the metaphoric concept meal, and the question, “Are you ready to

order?” In addition to the methods discussed previously, a natural method for studying scripts

and the cultural models used to interpret them is the “role play” technique, in which students act

out the script, playing the parts of the customer and the waiter. Cultural ideas concerning the

roles of the participants in the scene, the normal beliefs concerning their behavior in the script,

and cultural practices such as asking if the customer is ready to order, are aspects of the scene in

which cultural models are employed to interpret the scene and the script. Additional scripts

inherent in the scene include making a reservation, paying the bill, and leaving a tip. The

experiential scene affords rich opportunities to explore the conceptualization and its

interpretation by cultural models.

Multimodal Metaphor

Recent studies in the research literature investigated metaphor in “multimode” form—

constructions embedded in objects, graphics, and visual media. Blyth (1997) presented

grammatical aspect in Spanish through a video narrative, and Holme (2010) provided examples


of conceptual metaphors in drawings and photos. In addition, Eerden (2009), though not a study

of language acquisition, states that “[t]o achieve complete insight into one ICM [aka frame]

means one has to study the metaphoric representations in every mode of communication” (p.

260). The point is as pertinent for educators as it is for researchers: learners will understand a

conceptualization more fully by studying it in as many modes as possible. Metaphoric concepts

expressed through objects, graphics, and visual media can supplement the study of metaphoric

constructions in texts.

Examples of non-text modes of communication include graphics, comics, animated and

live action films, video, music, and multimedia presentations. All of these modes of

communication are routinely used in the language classroom, including second language classes.

Pedagogical techniques for employing these modes are many, so these techniques will not be

reviewed. Based on the research presented in this article, multimodal representations of

conceptualization and metaphor have not been explored often in CF research for their teaching

and learning benefits.

Summary

Though CF researchers acknowledge the role of culture in the contextual meaning of

linguistic forms, the principle is not often put into practice in research or in the classroom. The

difficulties in learning constructions in general and metaphorical constructions in particular are

the result of several different factors, including noticing and salience, frequency of use, and

cognitive parsing, among others identified in the studies described in the previous section. I

argue that another factor is cultural knowledge (or cultural models) present in the

conceptualization (Mischler, 2013). Understanding and producing a linguistic metaphor in the

appropriate situational context depends in part on the cultural models that license the


conceptualization for use in that context. Though some CF researchers acknowledge the

importance of cultural knowledge in the meaning and comprehension of constructions and

metaphor (Goldberg, 2010; Littlemore, 2003), research in second language acquisition from a CF

perspective has not often included culture as a factor. The paper presented some possible

methods for teaching the conceptualizations inherent in words, experiential scenes, and

multimedia in the second language classroom.

Conclusions

There is much that can be done to apply CF principles to language acquisition. The main

issue is that the study of conceptualization and metaphor is not complete, and so understanding

the impact of particular pedagogical techniques in the second language classroom requires more

study. The paper suggests that frames, scenes, and multimodal metaphor are promising avenues

for language pedagogy; each is a CF construct that provides intact both the physical experience

and the cultural models that motivate metaphoric constructions. Through the use of well-known

second language teaching techniques, such as narrative, role play, multimodal representations,

these three constructs have the potential for developing a pedagogy that combines CF research

with current second language teaching methods. Research on the paradigm concerning effective

second language learning is needed.


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