Fictive interaction blends in everyday life and courtroom settings

Abstract

This chapter deals with 'fictive interaction blends' (Pascual 2002), namely simplex blends structured by the frame of the ordinary face-to-face conversation. Fictive interaction is presented as the unifying pattern underlying blends previously analyzed separately. A parallel is drawn between these and blending examples from legal settings, representing the different trial phases. These involve the conceptualization and presentation of: (i) attorneys' serial monologues as simultaneous turn-taking; (ii) legal evidence as speaking; and (iii) the verdict as an audible message. The examples discussed appear at the levels of the discourse structure and content, the sentence and the grammatical constituent. I conclude that the conversation frame as well as the subframe of the fictive trialogue constitute fundamental structures of thought, language, and discourse.

Conceptual Blending in Children’s Games as a Model for Double-Scope Creativity and New Learning Opportunities

“…More specifically, how they can make mental contact with potential realities that would otherwise have a non-interactional relationship. The type of face-to-face communication carried out during a fantasy play bears resemblance with what Pascual (2002Pascual ( , 2008 and Brandt (2008) call "fictive interaction". Such interactional structure does not mirror the observable communicative situation and "constitutes an invisible -although equally present and critical -channel of communication between fictive participants, who may or may not correspond to those in the actual situation of communication" (Pascual 2008, p. 81).…”

Direct speech compounds: Evoking socio-cultural scenarios through fictive interaction

“…We suggest that modifiers of direct speech compounds are functionally determined by fictive interaction (Pascual 2002(Pascual , 2006a(Pascual , 2006b(Pascual , 2008. This constitutes a communicative type of fictivity (in the sense of Talmy 2000Talmy [1996), involving the use of the conceptual frame of situated face-to-face conversation.…”

“…', expressing the guarantor's promise. Direct speech compounds may also present an enunciation meant for bystanders in a 'fictive trialogue' (Pascual 2002(Pascual , 2006a(Pascual , 2008, as in the fragment below: In this example, by kissing a man in a bar, the character is expressing something to him, which is ultimately aimed at those who saw it happen. Thus, it is the observers of the kiss who are ultimately fictively addressed as bystanders.…”

5. Conceptual principles and relations

“…Conceptual blending in court discourse and symbolic play Pascual (2002Pascual ( , 2006Pascual ( , 2008 proposes that, similarly to Fauconnier and Turner's (2002) "Debate with Kant" account, Turner's (2002) "The Dream of the Rood" analysis and Coulson and Oakley's (2006) "Voting as Speaking", the enactment of the American courtroom procedure requires the creation of mental spaces of, what she calls, fictive interaction. The fictive interaction emerges from the blend of faceto-face interaction with the courtroom procedure, in which many of the communicative exchanges constitute display talk in Goffman's sense (1981).…”

“…Such complex mental processing is easily accounted for within the blending theory by positing an online construction of multiple mental spaces, which blend and facilitate the emergence of a uniform discourse space. One of the discursive strategies identified by Pascual (2006Pascual ( , 2008 is the use of rhetorical questions, which serve the three goals at once: (i) to give a brief summary of the opponent's position, (ii) to raise a question that the jury may potentially want to ask, and (iii) to create the discursive and cognitive space for counterargument to the opponent's position. These three goals can only be simultaneously achieved if integrated within one blend.…”