Conceptual blending, narrative discourse, and rhetoric

Abstract

This study addresses the concerns of the linguist interested in understanding complex referential relationships that develop over extended stretches of discourse, the interests of the rhetorician interested in understanding how human beings use language for purposes of establishing and maintaining individual and group identity, and the concerns of the literary critic interested in understanding the role narrative structure place and guiding readers through complex textual artifacts. I address these concerns I can talk being a three-part analysis of a passage from Art Spiegelman's Maus II: A Survivor's Tale using Fauconnier's and Turner's Conceptual Blending model. As an extension of Fauconnrier's (1994) Mental Spaces Grammar, conceptual blending is a general cognitive instrument capable of performing a variety of discourse functions - from event integration, conceptual change, and metaphor project to humor, literary invention, and the transfer of emotions and attitudes. Discourse participants construct mental spaces for the purpose of local understanding and action. One kind of mental space is a blended space, which develops rich conceptual structure of its own from two or more input spaces and a generic space. My aim is to show that conceptual blending provides a plausible account of how readers construct meaning in narrative discourse.