The cognitive approach to pluricentric languages and the pluricentricity of Portuguese: what's really new?

The paper discusses the potential and the possible contribution of Cognitive Linguistics to the emerging branch of Cognitive Sociolinguistics and for the study of the pluricentricity of languages. Initially the paper identifies the research agenda for pluricentric languages and the theoretical, methodological and descriptive contributions of Cognitive (Socio)Linguistics to the research on pluricentricity. Special attention is paid to theoretical models of Cognitive Linguistics that are used to describe the conceptual and social factors that shape the variation of meaning in pluricentric scenarios as well as the mental representations of variation in the language users' minds. The paper also focuses on advanced empirical methods capable to account for the multivariate dimensions intervening in pluricentric variation. The second part of the paper provides an overview of ongoing socio-cognitive research on the pluricentricity of Portuguese, especially the diachronic processes that form the divergence between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, which are based on lexical, constructional and attitudinal variables and by means of the concept-based measure of onomasiological variation.