Meaning construction and mental spaces
This chapter explores the view of meaning construction developed in cognitive semantics. In the previous chapter, we were concerned with the meaning of words. In this chapter, we consider how larger units of language like sentences and texts (units of discourse larger than the sentence) are meaningful. It is to this level of linguistic organisation that the term ‘meaning construction’ applies. Recall from Chapter 7 that cognitive semanticists see linguistic expressions as ‘points of access’ to the vast repository of encyclopaedic knowledge that we have at our disposal. According to this view, language underdetermines the content of the conceptual system. Meaning construction is the process whereby language ‘prompts for’ novel cognitive representations of varying degrees of complexity. These representations relate to conceived scenes and aspects of scenes, such as states of affairs in the world, emotion and affect, subjective experiences, and so on.
Cognitive semanticists treat meaning construction as a process that is fundamentally conceptual in nature. From this perspective, sentences work as ‘partial instructions’ for the construction of complex but temporary conceptual domains, assembled as a result of ongoing discourse. These domains, which are called mental spaces, are linked to one another in various ways, allowing speakers to ‘link back’ to mental spaces constructed earlier in the ongoing linguistic exchange. From this perspective, meaning is not a property of individual sentences, nor simply a matter of their interpretation relative to the external world. Instead, meaning arises from a dynamic process of meaning construction, which we call conceptualisation.
This chapter is primarily concerned with presenting Mental Spaces Theory, developed by Gilles Fauconnier ([1985] 1994, 1997). This approach holds that language guides meaning construction directly in context.
According to this view, sentences cannot be analysed in isolation from ongoing discourse. In other words, semantics (traditionally, the context-independent meaning of a sentence) cannot be meaningfully separated from pragmatics (traditionally, the context-dependent meaning of sentences). This is because meaning construction is guided by context and is therefore subject to situation specific information. Moreover, because meaning construction is viewed as a fundamentally conceptual process, this approach also takes account of general cognitive processes and principles that contribute to meaning construction. In particular, meaning construction relies on some of the mechanisms of conceptual projection that we have already explored, such as metaphor and metonymy.
