One of two key commitments of the cognitive linguistics enterprise. It constitutes a commitment to the characterization of general principles that are responsible for all aspects of human language.

This commitment follows from the assumption central to cognitive linguistics that language reflects general cognitive mechanisms and processes. Hence the generalisation commitment leads cognitive linguists to search for common organising principles across different language 'systems', such as phonology, syntax, semantics and so on. Such common organising principles include conceptual mechanisms like metaphor, conceptual blending and phenomena such as polysemy. The generalisation commitment stands in direct opposition to the modular approach taken in formal linguistics.