Conceptual Integration Networks

Abstract

Conceptual integration--"blending"-is a general cognitive operation on a par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing. It serves a variety of cognitive purposes. It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar, and it often performs new work on its previously entrenched products as inputs. Blending is easy to detect in spectacular cases but it is for the most part a routine, workaday process that escapes detection except on technical analysis. It is not resewed for special purposes, and is not costly.In blending, structure from input mental spaces is projected to a separate, "blended" mental space. The proiection is selective. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations. Blending operates according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. It additionally observes a set of optimality principles. I. Ih'TRODUCTIONMuch of the excitement about recent work on language, thought, and action stems from the discovery that the same structural cognitive principles are operating in areas that were once viewed as sharply distinct and technically incommensurable. Under the old view, there were word meanings, syntactic structures, sentence meanings (typically truth-conditional), discourse and pragmatic principles, and then, at a higher level, figures of speech like metaphor and metonymy, scripts and scenarios, rhetoric, forms of inductive and deductive rea-~~ Direct all correspondence to: Gilles Fauconnier,

#ForgiveUsForWeHaveSinned: Conceptual integration theory and political Internet humour

“…The basic ideas behind conceptual integration theory have since been elaborated in the works of Fauconnier & Turner (2006[1998, 2002, Turner & Fauconnier (1995, Turner (2007), Coulson & Oakley (2000), Grady et al (1999). Conceptual blending is a basic cognitive operation, "highly creative but crucial to even the simplest kinds of thought" (Fauconnier & Turner 2002: 18).…”

“…Rather, the new structure in the blend is generated in three ways, namely through the processes of composition, completion, and elaboration, which operate unconsciously. "Composition, completion, and elaboration all recruit selectively from our most favored patterns of knowing and thinking" (Fauconnier & Turner 2006[1998: 339). Composition refers to the projection of elements from the input spaces into the blended spaces and the creation of relations that do not exist in the inputs.…”

Choosing the Right Path: Image Schema Theory as a Foundation for Concept Invention

“…Introduced by Fauconnier and Turner (1998), conceptual blending has been employed very successfully to understand the process of concept invention, studied particularly within cognitive psychology and linguistics. The theory argues that at the heart of novel concept creation lies a combination process involving already existing knowledge and understood concepts.…”

“…Another important approach towards an understanding of concept invention is the theory of conceptual blending, introduced by Fauconnier and Turner (1998), which developed further the idea of bisociation introduced by the psychologist Koestler (1964). Conceptual blending proposes that novel concepts arise from a selective combination of previously known information (see Section 5.1 for a more thorough introduction).…”

Complementary perspectives on metaphor: Cognitive linguistics and relevance theory

“…What determines and constrains the determination of a particular integration network (e.g., simplex, single-scope, double-scope)? Fauconnier and Turner only provide a partial answer to such questions in the form of their 'optimality principles' (Fauconnier and Turner, 1998) or 'constituting' and 'governing principles' (Fauconnier and Turner, 2002). But might one of these principle have processing priority over the others?…”