First-Year Course Offerings — Fall 2026

CORE S140   Language and Cognition
Credits1
RestrictionsNo 2028 2027
Pre-RequisitesStudents may not take more than 1 CORE Sciences course
Co-Requisites
Core Area Sciences
Area of Inquiry
Liberal Arts Practices

What is the relationship between language and cognition? To answer this question students explore the interrelation between verbal expression and such cognitive faculties as bodily experience, imagination, memory, categorization, and abstract thought. The study of language as a cognitive phenomenon is a relatively new discipline. It originated in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then, cognitive linguistics has been a rapidly growing field that has both benefited from and contributed to its allied disciplines of cognitive psychology, cognitive anthropology, and cognitive neuroscience. The course begins by examining the advantages and shortcomings of the cognitive perspective on the different levels of language (e.g., sounds, words, sentences, texts, etc.). Students explore the connections of cognitive linguistics with the related fields that are broadly referred to as the "cognitive sciences." No background in linguistics is required, but interest in linguistics is expected.