This article contends that the collocation of words in a given textual situation is closely linked to the establishment of mental spaces and to the construction of mental models which are generated online as information is received and discourse is interpreted and processed (Fauconnier 1994, Fauconnier and Turner 2002). This connects with aspects of Hoey's theory of priming (2005), where collocation is seen as a textual cohesive phenomenon governed by the text producers' choice s of word combinations and by the text receivers' prospects of re-usage. The analysis of data from a small corpus of poli tic al discourse in the media supports the conceptual approach to collocation, and suggests considering this lexico-semantic cohesive function of words a cognitive property of linguistic expressions.
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