THE THEORY OF PSYCHOMECHANICS OF LANGUAGE, COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to expose the theory of the psychomechanics of language founded by the French linguist Gustave Guillaume in the first half of the last century and to contrast it with current theories of cognitive linguistics. In order to do so, we show the theoretical and practical postulates shared by these theories, and we explain what distinguishes them. We insist mainly on the similarities of their didactic applications in the foreign language classroom. For both Guillaumean linguists and cognitive linguists, language is conceived as an instrument of conceptualization of the world, and it is modeled by dynamic systems, images and schemas attempting to represent this conceptualization. Both perspectives seem to point to similar teaching practices, although they are theories that depart from different theoretical fields.