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Conceptual blending summery

المؤلف:  Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green

المصدر:  Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction

الجزء والصفحة:  C12-P439

2026-01-28

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 Conceptual blending summery

In this chapter we have presented an overview of Blending Theory. This approach derives from Mental Spaces Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, but differs from both in that it explicitly accounts for emergent structure: the idea that meaning construction often results in meaning that is ‘more than the sum of its parts’. Blending is distinguished by an architecture that includes a generic space, two or more input spaces and a blended space. Counterparts between input spaces are connected by virtue of a matching operation, compressed and selectively projected to the blended space. Emergent meaning is derived via three constitutive processes called composition, completion and elaboration. While Blending Theory arose from concerns with linguistic structure and the role of language in meaning construction, conceptual blending is argued to be a fundamental cognitive operation that is central to general properties of human thought and imagination. Recent research suggests that blending may be fundamental to a wide range of non-linguistic human behaviour, including folklore and ritual among others. We concluded the chapter with a critical evaluation of the relative achievements of both Blending Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory and suggested that, while Blending Theory accounts for much of what was originally thought to fall within the remit of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the latter nevertheless retains an important role in cognitive semantics in identifying primary metaphoric mappings that are directly grounded in experience.