Towards a cognitive theory of meaning construction
Gilles Fauconnier is the leading proponent of Mental Spaces Theory, a highly influential cognitive theory of meaning construction. Fauconnier develops this approach in his two landmark books Mental Spaces ([1985] 1994) and Mappings in Thought and Language (1997). More recently, Fauconnier and Turner have extended this theory, which has given rise to a new framework called Conceptual Blending Theory. We outline Mental Spaces Theory in the present chapter and explore its more recent development into Conceptual Blending Theory in the next chapter.
According to Fauconnier, meaning construction involves two processes: (1) the building of mental spaces; and (2) the establishment of mappings between those mental spaces. Moreover, the mapping relations are guided by the local discourse context, which means that meaning construction is always situated or context-bound. Fauconnier defines mental spaces as ‘partial structures that proliferate when we think and talk, allowing a fine-grained partitioning of our discourse and knowledge structures’ (Fauconnier 1997: 11). As we will see, the fundamental insight that this theory provides is that mental spaces partition meaning into distinct conceptual regions or ‘packets’.
We begin here by providing a general overview of Mental Spaces Theory before exploring its architecture in more detail.
Mental spaces are regions of conceptual space that contain specific kinds of information. They are constructed on the basis of generalised linguistic, pragmatic and cultural strategies for recruiting information. However, because mental spaces are constructed ‘on-line’, they result in unique and temporary ‘packets’ of conceptual structure, constructed for purposes specific to the ongoing discourse. The principles of mental space formation and the relations or mappings established between mental spaces have the potential to yield unlimited meanings. For example, consider the following utterance similar to one discussed by Fauconnier (1997):
This utterance gives rise to a counterfactual conceptualisation. That is, it sets up a scenario that runs counter to a presupposed reality. This scenario represents a mental space. Intuitively, you can think of a mental space as a ‘thought bubble’, rather like the strategy cartoonists use to reveal the inner thoughts of their characters. Crucially, Mental Spaces Theory holds that you can have many ‘thought bubbles’ working simultaneously.
Depending on the context, the utterance in (1) can give rise to different counterfactual scenarios. This is because the context guides mapping operations between the state of affairs that holds in reality and the states of affairs that are set up in different versions of the counterfactual scenario. Imagine that a childminder, Mary, utters the sentence in (1) after the child in her care, James, is particularly unruly. We consider here three distinct possible interpretations of (1) and see how Mental Spaces Theory accounts for them.
The lenient father interpretation (‘your father should be stricter’)
In this interpretation, the childminder Mary thinks that the unruly child’s father should demonstrate more authority and punish the child by smacking him. In terms of mapping operations between reality and the counterfactual scenario, this interpretation is derived by Mary with her stricter disposition ‘replacing’ the father with his more lenient disposition. This mapping is partial in the sense that the child’s father remains the same in all other respects: he has a beard, rides a bike, gets home at the same time in the evening and so on. What changes in this counterfactual scenario is that the father is now less tolerant of the child’s unruly behaviour and smacks the child. A consequence of this interpretation is that in the reality scenario, which is presupposed by the counter factual scenario, the father is being critically compared to the speaker Mary. Because the childminder would smack the child, by implication the failure of the father to smack the child is interpreted as a fault on his part. In this way, the counterfactual scenario entails consequences for how we view the father and his approach to parenting in reality.
The stern father interpretation (‘you’re lucky I’m not as strict as your father’)
In this interpretation, it is the father, who has a stricter disposition, who is replacing the childminder Mary. In other words, Mary is advising the child that he is lucky that she is looking after him rather than his father, because otherwise the child would have been smacked. In this interpretation, it is the father who is strict and Mary who is lenient in reality, and it is the father who assumes Mary’s place in the counterfactual scenario. The implication of this counter factual scenario for reality might be that where the father would smack the child, Mary exhibits greater restraint. This interpretation might therefore imply a positive assessment of Mary in her role as childminder.
The role interpretation (‘the only reason I’m not smacking you is because I’m not allowed to’)
In this interpretation, Mary is saying that if she could assume the role of the child’s father then she would smack the child. This interpretation assumes nothing about the child’s father who may (or may not) smack the child in reality. Instead, this counterfactual scenario replaces the father role with Mary. In this counterfactual scenario, Mary-as-father would smack the child. The implication of this interpretation for reality is that it comments on Mary’s role and the limitations that it entails: in her role as childminder, she is legally prohibited from smacking the child.
Several important points emerge from the discussion of example (1). Firstly, the same utterance can prompt for a number of different interpretations, each of which arises from different mappings between reality and the counterfactual scenario that is constructed. Secondly, each of these mappings brings with it different implications for how we view the participants in reality (for example, criticism versus a positive assessment and so on). Finally, this example illustrates that meaning is not ‘there in the words’ but relies on the conceptual processes that make connections between real and hypothetical situations. These processes result in representations that are consistent with, but only partially specified by, the prompts in the linguistic utterance. Of course, the precise interpretation constructed will depend upon the precise details of the context in which it is uttered, upon the speaker’s intentions and upon how these intentions are interpreted by the hearer. For example, if James has a father who is far stricter than his childminder in reality, he might be most likely to construct the second of these possible interpretations.
