Conceptual Blending and the Grounding Space of Ideology

Conceptual blending begins with the premise that language in itself is mere form, powerful, but empty without the dynamic mental processes that construct meaning.  Language is only the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of meaning construction and is only the form produced by deep and unconscious activities within the mind (Fauconnier and Turner6).  These activities are a result of what Fauconnier and Turner refer to as the three “I’s” of the mind: identity, integration and imagination (7).  Identity, or the recognition of sameness or equivalence, is not a product of language, but a “finished product provided to consciousness after elaborate work” (6).  Integration, the determination of similarities and oppositions, occurs in “backstage cognition” where dynamic and structural properties are subject to operational constraints of complex conceptual integration (6).  Finally, imagination makes meaning from identity and integration; imaginative simulation is the product of the conceptual blending (6).  Conceptual blending is not a special process related to complex figures and schemes such as metaphor, “Complex blending is always at work in any human thought or action, but it is often hard to see.  The meanings that we take most for granted are those where the complexity is best hidden” (25).

Conceptual blending is based on Gilles Fauconnier’s mental space theory.  According to Fauconnier, “Mental spaces are partial structures that proliferate when we think and talk allowing a fine-grained partitioning of our discourse and knowledge structures” (1996 11).   Mental spaces contain the elements of discourse that can be mapped onto one another.  For example, in the simple sentence “Martha is John’s wife” a base mental space that contains John and Martha is created in the mind of the receiver alongside a mental space that contains the roles of husband and wife.  The receiver maps husband to John and wife to Martha from the role space the base space of discourse elements.  As physical entities in the brain, mental spaces are “sets of activated neuronal assemblies, and the (mapping) lines between elements correspond to coactivation-bindings of a certain kind” (Fauconnier and Turner 40).  Mental spaces are partial in nature and are structured by frames of “long-term schematic knowledge” (40).  In our simple example, the frame of marriage is employed.  Frames developed out of work in frame semantics and artificial intelligence where Minsky developed the frame as data structure model.  A frame contains slots for relevant fillers of data.  The data model of frames allows for individual differences in frames, as different minds will utilize different slots and fillers (Coulson 19).  This aspect of the conceptual blending model is extremely important for critical discourse analysis and will be discussed in detail later in the paper.

The conceptual blending model consists of four main elements: inputs, cross-space mappings, generic space, and a blended space.  An input is a mental space that contains discourse elements.  Cross-space mappings are the connections between discourse elements in the input mental spaces.  A generic space is a mental space that contains what each input space has in common.  Finally the blended space contains certain elements from each input space to create a new and emergent structure (41).  According the Fauconnier and Turner, the emergent structure is the key element in the conceptual model.  Three cognitive process construct and conceive the blend: “First composition of the elements from the inputs makes relations available in the blend that do not exist in the separate inputs…Second, completion brings additional structure to the blend…the running of the blend is called elaboration” (43-4). 

Composition refers to the utilization of discourse elements located in the inputs to create discourse elements that do not occur in either input mental space.  Completion refers to the access of background knowledge frames, “pattern completion is the most basic kind of recruitment:  we see some parts of a familiar frame of meaning and much more of a frame is recruited silently but effectively to the blend” (48).  Completion is the key element of blend construction for critical discourse analysts.  It accounts for aspects of discourse such as presupposition, which Fauconnier describes as a “powerful expressive feature because it allows structure to be propagated by default through the lattice of mental spaces built up as part of an ongoing discourse” (1996 60).  According to Fairclough, presupposition is a key marker of ideology and hegemony in discourse (106).  For example a speech given by the CEO of Exxon entitled Meeting Growing Energy Demand and Addressing Climate Risk (Tillerson 1), presupposes that there is an imminent solution for climate change and that Exxon will be the solution provider.  Presupposition hides the ideology behind what is considered common knowledge, Fauconnier believes minds view “presuppositions for given information as prototypical.  From a space viewpoint, presuppositions are linguistically efficient (mentally and communicationally) because they allow a quick (implicit) filling in of spaces; they are also, as often noted, communicationally devious in making the hearer feel they are already somehow given and therefore difficult to question or refute” (1985 108).

Elaboration refers to the running of the blend in the mind of the receiver.  The meaning of the blend is interpreted in the given context.   A blend that contains powerful completion elements such as presupposition can become entrenched where its blended nature becomes invisible (conceptual metaphors are an example).  Entrenchment is the cognitive element of conceptual blending that best accounts for ideology and hegemony.  The following section describes an example discourse analysis that presents a possible accounting of ideological entrenchment.

Todd Oakley and Seana Coulson, in their paper Metaphoric Language in Discourse, analyze an interview between radio host Dave Davies and counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke.  The paper examines metaphor utilizing the conceptual blending model.  Their purpose is to demonstrate the pragmatic effects of the blending of multiple input spaces involved in a metaphoric description of the Bush administration’s failure to anticipate the attacks of September 11, 2001 given the intelligence available.  The metaphor in question is to connect-the-dots.  The following is an excerpt from the radio interview (italics stand for emphasis of speech) analyzed by Oakley and Coulson (45-46):

Clarke:            

(1) there’s uh some,

(2) …uh dots,

(3)  which are meaningless unless you put them together with

         lots of other dots.

(4)  and

(5)  I understand what he’s saying.

(6)  but there are some dots that come out screaming at you.

(7)  uh, to do something about me now

(8)  …that would be the kind of dot,

(9)  uh, that didn’t need a lot of connecting.

There is a double layering of metaphor at play here; first the metaphor of connect-the-dots and the elaborated metaphor of dots that scream to be connected.  Figure 1 is based on Oakley and Coulson’s model and diagrams the conceptual blend of the connect-the-dots metaphor.  Circles represent mental spaces.

Oakley and Coulson contend the metaphor had the pragmatic effect of saying that the Bush administration had all of the intelligence information required to predict the September 11^th attacks and were unable to put them together in a way that would have prevented the disaster (37).  They connected the dots, but still failed to act.  Oakley and Coulson utilize the term grounding space for Fauconnier and Turner’s generic space as the mental space that contains the participants, the situation and the setting.  Langacker (1999) developed the concept of a grounding space as “the actual speech event, its participant, and its immediate circumstances” (quoted in Oakley and Coulson 30).  A grounding space expands the generic space, which included only generic elements common to the inputs to include the basic elements that form context: base, situation, and setting.  The grounding space model seems to correlate with van Dijk’s concept of a context model.   I contend that the grounding space is also the place if ideological development and the source of hegemony.  A conceptual blend requires the context of the grounding space in addition to the long-term knowledge of the appropriate frame to run the elaboration.  Figure 2 diagrams the addition of the screaming dots metaphor. The grounding space includes a fourth ring that serves as a placeholder for ideological belief.

In this case ideology that matches a pro Democrat and an anti Republican belief system is strengthened while the opposite is weakened.  Clarke has used the same connect the screaming dots metaphor in numerous television, newspaper, radio, and Internet interviews, as well is his best selling book, Against All Enemies.  It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze the specific beliefs effected, but as Fauconnier states in Mapping in Language and Thought, “When a blend gains consistence, it reorganizes our categories and allows thought to move in new directions” (1996 23).  The thought in this particular study of a specific metaphor has the effect of strengthening or weakening ideological belief.  The strengthening and weakening in question is negligible in terms of the single discourse example of the radio interview, but consistent repetition of the metaphor could result in an entrenching of the blend. 

It can be argued that the frame of a discourse is the element of the conceptual blending model shifted by ideological entrenchment.  If we see frames as structures of knowledge stored in long term memory that provide context for the discursive event, then the blend occurs in concert with background knowledge and does not create it.  The growth of the grounding space could alter background knowledge and future instances of the blend will be received in an altered fashion.  For example, the first time a mind runs the connect-the-screaming-dots blend the effect on the ideological thought ring of the grounding space may be significant but transitory.  Subsequent runs of the blend encounter background knowledge familiar with the pragmatic effect of the metaphor and the frame is shifted in one direction or the other depending upon the original ideological makeup of the frame.  Consistent exposure to the blend creates a cyclical reinforcement that alters the ideological beliefs held in the grounding space that in turn change the knowledge frame that alters the grounding space on the next running and so on.  The cyclical entrenchment of blends that enhance the ideological ring of the grounding space could account for the consensus aspects of hegemony.   The grounding space with which we formulate context and common sense (including resistance to the hegemonic common sense that the example provides) is susceptible to blends that incorporate identity, integration and imagination.  The individual mind imagines the blend and embeds meaning in the appropriate frames with the result being actions based on blends become the perceived will of the person.

The application of conceptual blending theory to critical discourse analysis presents a potential for the analysis of the entrenchment of ideology and the formation of hegemony.  Even within an American hegemony of Even within an American hegemony of my country right or wrong, there exists a hegemony that follows the government is always right belief system and a hegemony that believes the other political party is always inept.  The ideologies involved are deeply entrenched and hegemonic and complex.  The example of the connect-the-screaming-dots metaphor is only a fragment of the entire discourse.  It is possible a critical discourse analysis of the entire text will yield a different set of critical conclusions, but the structural model developed via conceptual blending theory remains applicable as it opens up a study of repeating blends throughout various corpuses that cyclically entrench ideological beliefs.  There are many questions yet to be explored: What is the level of repetition required, five, fifty exposures to blend, that will result in a cyclical entrenchment between grounding space and knowledge frames?  Are ideological shifts even possible, or does the running of conceptual blends only serve to entrench existing beliefs?  Does ideology cognitively form a Boothian “identification of minds” for society as a whole the way irony mentally connects sender and receiver (111)?  These are a few of the questions an application of cognitive models such as conceptual blending to critical discourse analysis will begin to answer.