What is it about?
This review examines Enrique Bernárdez and Anastasiia Carisio's book Lingüística cultural. Bases teóricas, modelos y aplicaciones, which presents a comprehensive introduction to Cultural Linguistics. The book argues that language cannot be fully understood without considering the cultural knowledge, social practices, and shared beliefs that shape how people communicate and make meaning. It brings together ideas from Cognitive Linguistics, anthropology, ethnolinguistics, and distributed cognition, while introducing readers to important traditions that are often overlooked in English-language scholarship, especially work from Eastern Europe and the Slavic world. The review discusses the book's theoretical contributions, practical case studies, and its proposal for a more culturally grounded understanding of language
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Why is it important?
The book addresses a long-standing divide between approaches that emphasize universal aspects of human cognition and those that focus on cultural diversity. Its main contribution is to show that meaning is not only created in individual minds but is also distributed across communities through shared knowledge, history, and social interaction. The review highlights how the authors integrate Cognitive Linguistics with Cultural Linguistics and make lesser-known traditions accessible to a wider audience. At a time when researchers are increasingly interested in how language reflects cultural values and worldviews, this book offers an important framework for understanding the relationship between language, culture, and cognition in a more comprehensive way
Perspectives
I was particularly attracted to this book because it tackles a question that has interested me throughout much of my academic career: how to reconcile the cognitive foundations of language with the undeniable influence of culture on meaning construction. What I found most valuable was the authors''effort to bring together intellectual traditions that rarely interact, especially Anglo-American Cognitive Linguistics and Slavic ethnolinguistic research. Writing this review gave me the opportunity not only to evaluate the book's achievements but also to reflect on how future research might build stronger connections between cultural approaches, embodied cognition, and other developments in Cognitive Linguistics. I hope readers will see this book as an invitation to engage with a broader and more internationally inclusive view of linguistic theory
Professor Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza
University of La Rioja
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This page is a summary of: Review of Bernárdez & Carisio (2025): Lingüística cultural. Bases teóricas, modelos y aplicaciones, Cognitive Linguistic Studies, September 2026, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/cogls.00151.iba.
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