Pedagogical construction grammar — the fashion of the day?

This paper provides a short introduction to Construction Grammar (CxG). It first very briefly outlines how linguistic theory has developed over time. Then it describes similarities and differences between the usage-based approach of CxG and Chomsky’s generative approach to the study of language. After that different types of constructions are described in order to explain the concept of constructions as ‘conventionalized form-meaning pairings’. Next, eight different reasons are discussed for why CxG may last and not share the fate of other linguistic models that only ‘survived’ for a more or less short period of time. In this context, important characteristics of different approaches to the description and analysis of language are described that can all be subsumed under the umbrella term ‘Construction Grammar’. Finally. this paper explains why CxG provides an ideal framework for foreign language teaching and learning and it provides a few concrete examples showing how a constructionist approach to language pedagogy could be used in the classroom to deal with different lexicogrammatical phenomena.