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conceptual blending, form and meaning

gilles fauconnier, mark turner

https://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/maltt/cofor-1/textes/Fauconnier-Turner03.pdf



we can bring two things together mentally in various ways. blending is one of them

Conceptual blending is a basic mental operation that leads to new meaning, global insight, and conceptual compressions useful for memory and manipulation of otherwise diffuse ranges of meaning.

this is related to metaphor

conceptual blending is facilitated by a generic space which connects both (IDENTIFY THOSE IN METAPHORS FOR ARRAYS, STREAMS, TYPES, or maybe types already are generic spaces)

FORMS ARE MENTAL ELEMENTS (p.72) (but then they really focus more on signs and units, and it seems to be more applicable to codespeak than to source code)

one of the most familiar human scenes is caused motion -> throwing an error, catching an exception, passing an argument

double-scope: “essential frame and identity properties are brought in from both inputs. Double-Scope Blending can resolve clashes between inputs that differ fundamentally in content and topology. This is a powerful source of human creativity.” (p.60) this is what ricoeur says when he specifies that both target and origin domains of the metaphor influence each other. compression: Compression maximizes and intensifies the set of essential relations shared between two things. Blending can perform massive compressions and express them in simple forms. How is that beautiful? It’s beautiful when it starts to have secondary meangings (insight as to XXX, problem domain, computer hardware domain, the next one coming, etc.)

it is always about driving blends in the direction of familiar, human-scale structure; and it readily anchors itself on existing material objects (p. 85)

re: this anchoring on material objects; the only material objects at hand are textual ones.


other references

J. GOGUEN, “An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Application to User Interface Design.”, in C. NEHANIV (ed.), Computation for Metaphor, Analogy, and Agents, A volume in the series “Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence”, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 1999, pp. 242-291. T. VEALE, “Pragmatic Forces in Metaphor Use: The Mechanics of Blend Recruitment in Visual Metaphors”, in C. NEHANIV, op. cit., pp. 37-51.