In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the school of linguistics that views the important essence of language as innately based in evolutionarily-developed and speciated faculties, and seeks explanations that advance or fit well into the current understandings of the human mind. The guiding principle behind this area of linguistics is that language creation, learning, and usage must be explained by reference to human cognition in general —the basic underlying mental processes that apply not only to language, but to all other areas of human intelligence.