SOURCE

BLEND

TARGET

Input Space 1 "physical events" container orifice heat steam explode boiling point

Blended Space person/container ears/orifice heat/anger steam/smoke explode boiling/highest degree of emotion

Input Space 2 "emotions" person ears anger sign of anger show extreme anger highest degree of emotion

Input Space 3 "physiology" person body heat perspiration, redness acute shaking, loss of physiological control

If the Blend stood by itself, it could not be interpreted in the real world because anger does not produce smoke or explosion. But in the network model, the Blend remains linked to the Inputs. A sentence like He was so mad I could see the smoke coming out of his ears is directly identifying the blend, but inferences in the blend--e.g. smoke is a sign of great anger - are projected back to the Target Input Spaces--he was extremely angry and was showing physiological signs of it. (What these signs actually were is irrelevant). Of course, the structure of the Blend itself is highly dependent on the conventional metaphorical mapping of heat to anger. In addition, we find an explanation for the actual grammatical structure of the sentences with mixed vocabulary, like He exploded, I could see the smoke coming out of his ears. This analysis explains why the sentence evokes an integrated scene unavailable in either source or target; it applies directly to the Blend. It provides a frame (seeing somebody in an abnormal and dangerous state, with corresponding emotions, etc.) not available in the source or target. Next, the blend can have a life of its own, not fully determined by the inputs. So, we can say, with some hyperbole: "God, was he ever mad. I could see the smoke coming out of his ears--I thought his hat would catch fire!" It is easy to see how this works: in the blend, the hat on fire is a sign of even greater heat, hence even greater anger, emotions, etc. But there is no counterpart for the hat in the source: the elaboration is in the blend, where the frame of somebody on fire is used (not the boiling kettle anymore), and the existing mapping operates towards the source (greater heat) and towards the target (greater anger, but also greater loss of control, greater social danger, etc.) The Lakoff/Kövecses analysis underscores the essential role of physiological reaction metonymies in the formation of the metaphorical system for emotions. The metonymic correspondences are in the target--body heat, redness, etc. That maps directly onto the blend, in the sense that in the blend (but not in the target), the physiological reactions are smoke, explosion, etc. This is done by mapping hot (in the target, for people, with a certain physiology) to hot in the source (for containers with quite different physical properties), and then from source to blend, where the new set of physiological reactions is constructed. Metonymy Projection In Metaphoric Blends The interaction of metaphor, metonymy, and binding is particularly evident in the canonical representation of "death" as "the Grim Reaper," a sinister, skeleton-like character holding a scythe and wearing a cowl (see Turner & Fauconnier 1995). The Grim Reaper arises by blending many spaces: (1) a space with individual human dying; (2) a space with an abstract pattern of causal tautology in which an event of a certain kind is caused by an abstract causal element: e.g., Death causes dying, Sleep causes sleeping, Smell causes smell, Sloth causes laziness, and so on; (3) a space containing a prototypical human killer; and (4) a space with reapers in the scenario of harvest. This complex blend allows non-counterparts to be combined by virtue of metonymic connections in the inputs. Reapers and skeletons are not counterparts in the cross-space mapping. But Death as a cause is metonymically associated with skeleton as an effect. In the blend, the killer-reaper is combined with the skeleton in a way that fits the frame in the blend (people have skeletons). Similarly, Death in the input space of human dying is metonymically associated with priests: priests are stereotypically present at an event of death, and their institution is concerned with death and afterlife. Reapers and priests are not metaphoric counterparts. In the blend, the attire of The Grim Reaper can be the attire of a monk: the metonymy between death and priests in the input is projected to a part-whole relation in the blend. The cowl, for example, pulled over the head of The Grim Reaper at once evokes both religious connotations of death and the impression of Death as mysterious, unknown, solitary, and set apart from norms of human society. In Fauconnier and Turner (in pressb), we offer evidence for the following competing optimality principles on integration networks: Integration: The blend must constitute a tightly integrated scene that can be manipulated as a unit. More generally, every space in the network should have integration. (Example: a ship hitting something and sinking it is a well-integrated scene, although in this case it is somewhat fantastic for somebody who knows that icebergs cannot sink.) Web: Manipulating the blend as a unit must maintain the web of appropriate connections to the input spaces easily and without additional surveillance or computation. (Example: as the Titanic blend gets elaborated, the connections to the inputs are not altered; compare with "If Clinton were the Titanic, the Titanic would be the iceberg.") Unpacking: It is optimal for the blend alone to allow reconstruction of the inputs, the cross-space mapping, the generic space, and the network of connections between all these spaces (Example: "I could see the smoke coming out of his ears. He exploded with anger." The literal meaning is impossible, which makes it easy to assign "smoke" and "explode" to the HEAT input, and "he" and "anger" to the EMOTIONS input.) Topology: For any input space and any element in that space projected into the blend, it is optimal for the relations of the element in the blend to match the relations of its counterpart. (Example: The Titanic's hitting the iceberg in the TITANIC input matches the Titanic's hitting the iceberg in the blend. The strength and buoyancy of Clinton versus Starr in the POLITICS input matches the strength and buoyancy of the Titanic versus the iceberg in the blend.) Good reason: All things being equal, if an element appears in the blend, there will be pressure to find significance for this element. Significance will include relevant links to other spaces and relevant functions in running the blend. (Example: Once the anger-heat blend is launched, we are unlikely to interpret "He was smoking" as purely incidental information about his use of tobacco at the moment.) Metonymy projection constraint: When an element is projected from an input to the blend and a second element from that input is projected because of its metonymic link to the first, shorten the metonymic distance between them in the blend. (Example: the skeleton becomes the bodily form of The Grim Reaper.) We saw above that blending can combine non-counterpart elements from a single input, such as Death, the cowl of the priest, and the skeleton of the person who has died. The metonymic distance is large between abstract death as the general cause of all deaths and the cowl worn by a certain kind of participant in a ritual associated with particular deaths. But in the blend, the metonymic connection is direct: the cowl is the attire of Death. Similarly, the skeleton after decomposition of the body is a distant product of death. But in the blend the skeleton is actually a body part of Death. The fact that metonymy is preserved in such cases can be viewed as a consequence of Topology. The metonymy projection constraint additionally specifies that metonymies get tighter under projection. Satisfying the metonymic projection constraint is not a matter of blindly projecting metonymic links. The internal integration of the blend provides opportunities for some acceptable metonymies but not for others. Since Death is an active person in the blend, and active persons are known to have skeletons (although they are not normally visible), the part-whole metonymy skeleton-body becomes available as the counterpart of the distant metonymy in the input. Tightening metonymies under projection typically optimizes Integration in the blend, since it helps build a tighter and more easily manipulated unit. Now consider some additional cases that show how metonymy projection operates. Take the example of a cartoon representing a powerful newspaper company about to succeed in a hostile takeover of a weaker automobile company that will be eliminated by selling off its assets. The cartoon shows a giant printing press smashing a car. This is a metaphorical blend: input one has the stronger and weaker objects; input two has the contest between companies. The cross-space mapping is the basic metaphor that maps stronger objects destroying weaker objects to winning and losing. The strong heavy object is mapped onto the powerful newspaper company; the weaker object is mapped onto the weaker automobile company. But in the blend, we find the printing press as the strong heavy object and the car as the weak object. This is an efficient exploitation of internal connections: the printing press is a salient instrument of producing newspapers, and cars are the salient products of automobile companies. In the input, the printing press is not an instrument of destruction, but it has a force-dynamic function associated with crushing which can be associated with a car-smashing machine of the sort used in recycling automobiles. In the blend, the printing press is fused with both the company and the car-smashing machine. What is going on here? The blend must achieve three goals. First, given that the cartoon is a visual representation, the blend must be concrete and specific. Second, it must fit the frame of stronger and weaker object. Third, these objects in the blend must be properly connected to the companies in input two. The companies in input two, being abstract, cannot in themselves provide the corresponding concrete elements in the blend. The weaker and stronger objects in input one are concrete but not specific, and so cannot in themselves provide the corresponding specific elements in the blend. But we can exploit internal connections in the inputs to make the elements in the blend adequate. The printing press and the car are concrete, specific objects associated with the companies that can also be fit into the frame of the stronger object destroying the weaker object. They fit this frame in part because the printing press intrinsically has force-dynamic structure capable of destruction and in part because we are familiar with car-smashing machines. In the blend, two elements are simultaneously (1) two concrete, specific objects; (2) a stronger object destroying a weaker object; and (3) two companies. Clearly, such a blend is creative. Not just any connections will do. There has to be a search for elements that simultaneously satisfy a number of constraints. The printing press and car have topology in the blend (the press crushes and the car is crushed) that their counterparts in Input 2 do not have (the press is an instrument of making newspapers and the car is a salient product of the automobile company). Additionally, the printing press and car in Input 2 have no counterparts in Input 1. Interestingly, the elements that did not project their input-topology (printing press and car) end up being the only objects in the blend. The cartoon of the printing press smashing the car is remarkable because it is a case where Integration and Topology are maximized by recruiting special internal connections in Input 2. Because the topologies of strong and weak object on the one hand and competing companies on the other will match only at a very abstract level, we find that in addition to the companies, objects closely connected to them are projected to the blend in a way that closely matches and elaborates the Input 1 topology of strong and weak objects. This example emphasizes that conceptual projection is a dynamic process that cannot be adequately represented by a static drawing. Once the conceptual projection is achieved, it may look as if the printing press has always corresponded to the stronger object and the car to the weaker. But in the cross-space mapping, the printing press and the car play no role; they have no counterparts in Input 1. Rather, the cross-space counterparts are stronger object and newspaper company, weaker object and automobile company. Under metonymy projection from Input 2, the printing press in the blend becomes the counterpart of the stronger object in Input 1, and the car in the blend becomes the counterpart of the weaker object in Input 1. This example also shows that identity is metonymy of zero distance. The metonymic relation in Input 2 between company and commercial product is transformed into identity in the blend, where the printing press is identically both a printing press and the newspaper company to which it is metonymically related as an instrument (in one of the inputs). Suppose the cartoon now contains the newspaper magnate operating the printing press to smash the car, which is being driven by the car magnate. Here the blend structure becomes elaborate through the recruitment to the blend of an additional adversaries-with-instruments frame in which adversaries fight with opposing instruments, and in which the winning adversary has the superior instrument. Now the printing press and car in Input 2 have counterparts in the adversaries-with-instruments frame: in input 2, the printing press is a symbol of a capacity for productivity that is an instrument of corporate competition, and the car is a product that is an instrument of corporate competition; these instruments in Input 2 are the counterparts of the instruments in the adversaries-with-instruments frame. Now, the topology of opposing instruments in the blend matches the topology of opposing instruments in the adversaries-with-instruments frame. This frame has the useful property of aligning superiority of instrument with superiority of adversary. In this case, we see that exploiting special internal connections in Input 2 makes it possible to recruit a frame that makes Topology much stronger in the blend structure. Binding in Hell Our last extended example is a literary example, Dante's celebrated portrayal of Bertran de Born in the Inferno, canto 28, lines 139-142. While living, Bertran had instigated strife between the King of England and the King's son and heir, tearing father and son apart. When seen in hell, Bertran consists, spectacularly, of two parts: a headless body and its separate head. The body carries its head in its hand, lifting the head manually to talk to Dante as he passes by on his journey through hell. Bertran cites his punishment as the appropriate analogue of his sin: Perch'io parti' così giunte persone, partito porto il meo cerebro, lasso! dal suo principio ch'è in questo toncone. Così s'osserva in me lo contrapasso. Because I parted people so joined, I carry my brain, alas, separated from its root, which is in this trunk. Thus is to be seen in me the retribution. This is an impossible blending, in which a talking human being has an unnaturally divided body. There are many parts to the development of this blend. First, there is a conventional metaphoric understanding: dividing people socially is understood metaphorically as dividing a joined physical object. This metaphoric projection is not at all novel. We can say conventionally that a homewrecker has "come between" a married couple by creating "distance" between them. "Till death do us part" is not a vow to hold hands; "what God has joined together, let no man put asunder" does not mean that husband and wife are surgically sutured. We can speak of the breaking of a business bond, of a bond of belief, of a bond of loyalty, of a bond of trust. None of this inherently involves the specific information of dividing a head from a body. In this conventional metaphor, proximity, junction, and separation are projected to an abstract generic space that applies to any number of specific targets, including targets concerned with social and psychological relations. But in Dante's portrayal of Bertran de Born, the generic space is fleshed out to create a blended space. Dante's blended space takes, from the target, the specific sin and sinner, and, from the source, the source counterpart of the sin--the separation of a joined physical object. In the blended space, the source counterpart of the sin is visited upon the target sinner as punishment. We can derive a sense of justice in this situation by recognizing figural retribution: the sinner has his own sin visited upon him not literally but figurally; the projection to the sin is traced backward to its source, and this source analogue of the sin is visited upon the sinner. The specific information from the source--physical separation of a joined physical object--is applied impossibly to the target human being in a blended space. The blended space contains something impossible for both source and target: a talking and reasoning human being who carries his detached but articulate head in his hand like a lantern. In the case of the portrayal of Bertran de Born, the power and even the existence of central inferences of the projection come not from the source space and not from the target space but only from the blended space. This portrayal is often quoted out of context as an example of the kind of horrible punishment found in the Inferno--many more people are familiar with this portrayal than have read the Inferno. Those familiar with the passage (out of context) typically take it as signifying not merely badness, but badness of a specific description: unnatural, ghastly, violent, destructive of a worthy whole. The bodily division is taken as a sign of profound and specific wrong. A sophisticated reader of this passage in its context may have already concluded that Bertran has sinned, given that he is in hell, and that Bertran has sinned in a particular way, given his location in hell. But even such a reader may derive all the central inferences from the portrayal itself. It is possible to know an abstract definition of a sin while having only the thinnest corresponding conception. Where are these central inferences constructed? Let us consider the background metaphoric projection. In the source space, there may be nothing wrong with separating a joined physical object, like a nut. In the target space, there may be nothing wrong with setting two people against each other, or, more specifically, in setting son against father (perhaps the father is an evil infidel warrior, for example). The background metaphoric projection does not necessarily carry the inference that division is wrong--"breaking up" can be good. Many readers, informed of the relevant history, would not even agree that Bertran de Born's actions were sinful, much less treacherous. But we all know there is something ghastly and horribly wrong about a decapitated human body that operates as if it were alive. We see the amazing spectacle of Bertran carrying his detached head, and read this division as symbolizing something unnatural, ghastly, violent, inappropriately destructive. The inference is established in the blended space before Bertran de Born begins to tell his story to Dante in hell--which is to say, before we are told the history of the target space. As we have seen before in metaphor-metonymy interactions, the blend can combine non-counterparts, provided the appropriate metonymic connnections are in place. In the metaphoric cross-space mapping, the divided object in the source is the counterpart of the "divided" father and son in the target, not of Bertran de Born in the target. In the target, Bertran de Born is the sinner, the agent of the dividing, not the victim of the dividing. But Bertran de Born is, in the target, metonymically associated with the divided father and son as the cause of their division. He is projected to the blend as the sinner and the agent of the dividing, but he is also combined there with the divided object itself. It is not that the blend could not have made use of the correspondence between the divided physical object and the father-son. A different blend might have shown de Born pushing father and son apart and suffering some horrible punishment as he does so. But instead, the blend combines the divided physical object with de Born. The blend has exploited metonymies to create a combination of non-counterparts to provide a blended scene that signifies appropriate retribution. References Coulson, S. 1996. "The Menendez Brothers Virus: Analogical Mapping in Blended Spaces." In Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language. Edited by Adele Goldberg. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Coulson, Seana. 1997. "Semantic Leaps: The role of frame-shifting and conceptual blending in meaning construction." Ph.D. dissertation, UC San Diego. Fauconnier, Gilles. 1997. Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fauconnier, Gilles and Mark Turner. [1994]. "Conceptual projection and middle spaces," UCSD Cognitive Science Technical Report 9401. San Diego. [Available from http://cogsci.ucsd.edu and from http://markturner.org] ____________. [1996] "Blending as a Central Process of Grammar" in Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language. Edited by Adele Goldberg. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. ____________. [in pressa] "Principles of Conceptual Integration" in Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language, II. Edited by Jean-Pierre Koenig. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. ____________. [in pressb]. "Conceptual Integration Networks." Cognitive Science. ____________. [in preparation] Making Sense. Lakoff, George. 1993. "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor" In Metaphor and Thought, second edition. Edited by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George [and Zoltán Kövecses]. 1987. Women Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Turner. 1989. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Oakley, Todd. 1996. "Presence: The Conceptual Basis of Rhetorical Effect." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland. Turner, Mark. 1996a. "Conceptual Blending and Counterfactual Argument in the Social and Behavioral Sciences," Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin, editors, Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. pages 291-295. Turner, Mark. 1996b. The Literary Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Turner, Mark. 1991. Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Turner, Mark. 1987. Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Turner, Mark. (1989) "Categories and Analogies" in Analogical Reasoning: Perspectives of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy. Edited by David Helman. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 3-24. Turner, Mark and Gilles Fauconnier. 1995. "Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression." Metaphor and Symbolic Activity. 10:3, 183-203. ____________. [in pressa] "Conceptual Integration in Counterfactuals" in Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language, II. Edited by Jean-Pierre Koenig. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. ____________. [in pressb] "A Mechanism of Creativity." Poetics Today.