Factorial Surveys: A Novel Empirical Method in Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract

The Factorial Survey is a method used mainly in sociology to investigate opinions or judgements based on latent principles. To the author’s knowledge, however, it has never been used in linguistics. This paper reports the methodology and results of a theory-driven investigation of cognitive knowledge structures for which a large body of empirical data was collected and analysed by the Factorial Survey method. This method was implemented in order to empirically study intertextuality from a cognitive linguistic point of view.