The aim of this paper is to briefly review the appearance of the Cognitive Linguistics paradigm in both its intellectual and scientific dimensions. Still evolving, Cognitive Linguistics comprises various, although mutually complementary, stances to language: Langacker's Cognitive Grammar, Fillmore and Kay's Construction Grammar, Lakoff's theory of conceptual metaphor, Prototype theory, Fauconnier's Mental Spaces Theory, Talmy's Framing-Theory, among others; in fact, semantics and meaning are common grounds to them all. The author traces back the origin of CL, an alternative to Chomsky's Generative Grammar, to the difficulties presented by a proper comprehension of meaning, and points out that in its development CL has interacted with other disciplines such as topology, psychology, and biology. (Javier Herrero Ruiz, Ruiz de Mendoza Group)