Soares da Silva states that Cognitive Linguistics has given rise to numerous studies in the area of language variation, particularly what is currently acknowledged as Cognitive Sociolinguistics that delves into all types of “lectal variation” and their social, cultural and conceptual dimensions (p. 13). This author puts forth the research agenda for pluricentricity studies, which encompasses four different levels: descriptive, methodological, representational and applied. As far as the first is concerned, pluricentricity focuses on “the relationship between national linguistic variation, culture and cognition” (p. 15), namely how variation impacts on meaning. In terms of methodology, new empirical methods may be applied to the study of “the multidimensionality of the variation of meaning” (p. 15). Finally, it is fundamental to approach the way speakers “perceive, categorize and evaluate national variation” (p. 16), both variation of meaning and meaning of variation.
