认知语言学是语言学的一门颇新分支，它脱胎自认知心理学或认知科学，大约在1980年代后期至1990年代开始成型。认知语言学涉及电脑自然语言理解、人工智能、语言学、心理学、系统论等多种学科，它针对当时仍很火热的生成语言学，提出：语言的创建、学习及运用，从基本上都必须能够透过人类的认知而加以解释，因为认知能力是人类知识的根本。

认知语言学有以下三大分支：

认知语言学的创立者普遍被认为是乔治·莱考夫(George Lakoff)、马克·詹森(Mark Johnson)及朗奴·兰盖克。当中雷可夫及詹森专门研究语言中的比喻及其与人类认知的关系；而兰盖克的专长在于认知文法的生成。

Cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the branch of linguistics that interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a particular tongue, which underlie its forms. It is thus closely associated with semantics but is distinct from psycholinguistics, which draws upon empirical findings from cognitive psychology in order to explain the mental processes that underlie the acquisition, storage, production and understanding of speech and writing.