by Mark Turner
We have seen that parable carries narrative meaning across at least two mental spaces. In fact, other spaces are involved, and their involvement is not a modest addition to parable, but instead its most important aspect. We can detect a hint of this new aspect of parable by looking at a curious event in the tale of the ox and the donkey: The ox and the donkey, like Alice’s hurried rabbit, talk.
Talking animals are a conceptual blend. The talking ox and the talking don- key do not reside in the space that treats everyday farm labor and mute beasts of burden, nor do they reside in the hypothetical space that treats the vizier’s appre- hension of Shahrazad’s future disaster. Where, conceptually, do they reside? It may seem perverse to ask this question. Talking animals are as natural as the
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nursery. They are obvious in every national literature. But in the study of the mind, whatever looks natural is most suspect. Talking animals, seemingly so trivial, are created through a general and central parabolic activity of the every- day mind—blending. Blending has been studied in detail by Gilles Fauconnier and me jointly and separately, and by Seana Coulson, Nili Mandelblit, Todd Oakley, and Douglas Sun.
The blending involved in the tale of the ox and the donkey is extensive. Let us approach it by looking at the central inference of the tale. The central infer- ence is that the donkey has outsmarted himself; he should have foreseen that, on a farm, the inevitable background of ploughing and milling requires work ani- mals, so that if one work animal is excused, another becomes liable for the job. The donkey’s failure to foresee the obvious likelihood that he will suffer justifies our judgment that he is too smart for his own good. His conceit makes him blind to the obvious. We blame him for being blind.
Can this central inference be constructed in the target space independently of proj ection? Can it be constructed in the source space and projected from source to target? The answers to these questions are no and no. This central inference does not arise in the target space independently of projection from somewhere, which is why the vizier exerts himself so ingeniously to project it. This central inference requires an agent who outsmarts himself by failing to take account of inevitable and unavoidable background. This inevitable and unavoidable back- ground does exist in the source space: Farm labor is performed by work animals. But it does not exist in the target space. There, the counterpart of labor by work animals is suffering by wives, but Shahrazad explicitly disagrees that the suffer- ing by the wives is inevitable in the way ploughing is inevitable on a farm. In this target space, she views King Shahriyar’s practice as contrary to courtly decorum, to his own disposition, and to traditions of order. So does he. His subjects believe that only exceptional and remarkable events have led Shahriyar to this bizarre practice. They believe they are right to rebel against it. Secretly, he may think so, too. The enormity of his exceptional practice is unquestioned, which accounts in part for the plausibility of his discontinuing it under appropriately contrived conditions.
Shahrazad’s plan to change Shahriyar’s mind depends on bringing him to invoke traditional deeply held normative expectations—his own—against his recent abnormal behavior. In the source space, labor by work animals is inevi- table background: standard, expected, and unavoidable. But in the target space, suffering by wives has the opposite status: abnormal, surprising, and possibly avoidable. According to the logic of this target space, therefore, Shahrazad can- not be judged as blind for overlooking the inevitability of the background prac- tice, because the inevitability does not exist; it is explicitly denied. Her denial is
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reinforced by the narrator of The Tbousandand OneNig}Jts, who, before the vizier tells the tale of the ox and the donkey, classifies Shahriyar’s behavior as quirky and unstable.
Because the inevitable background necessary for the central inference does not exist in the target, the central inference cannot arise in the target. We can- not infer in the target that the inevitable background requires someone to suffer; that if Shahrazad manages to get the virgins off the hook, she must suffer in their place; or that Shahrazad is foolish for working against inevitable background. The central inferences of the tale of the ox and the donkey cannot arise in the target independently of proj ection. The vizier must construct them according to the logic of a different frame—farm labor—and then project the inference to the target without projecting the details of the frame that made it possible for him to establish it.
There are additional reasons that this central inference cannot arise in the target. The agent who outsmarts himself does so because he is blinded by pride. But this condition does not apply to Shahrazad in the target. Qlite unlike her counterpart, the donkey, she does indeed see the risk and explicitly insists upon taking it. The donkey is foolish for blinding himself to the risk but Shahrazad looks at it without blinking. Again, the central inference of the tale of the ox and the donkey is simply unavailable exclusively from the target.
But the central inference is not available from the source, either. In the source space of farm animals, it is predictable that if one beast of burden is excused from ploughing and milling, another will be used. A human being on the farm who did not see this likelihood would be thought to have fiziled in not seeing it. But a donkey cannot see it. Much less can a donkey scheme or foresee. In the source, the inferences that a donkey is responsible for the ox’s reprieve, that he should have foreseen how the ox's reprieve would result in his own grievous employ- ment, and that he is to blame for having outwitted himself are simply unavail- able. Farm animals do not have these capacities.
Where are the central inferences constructed? They are constructed in the blended space of animals with human characteristics. The blend includes abstract information that is taken as applying to both source and target, such as schematic event shape and force-dynamic structure. Additionally, specific information from both source and target is projected into the blended space. The scenario of ploughing and milling as inevitable background, the relation of work animals to this background, and the classification of the ox and the donkey as work animals come from the source space. From this information, we can deduce that when the ox is excused, the donkey is the likely replace- rnent. We can deduce this only because the donkey is a donkey and a donkey can pull a plough, which is information from the source space. But to obtain
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the central inferences also requires that the donkey be intelligent, cunning, and able to articulate his complicated plan to the ox so that it can be acted upon. This information comes from the target space. The blended space incorpo- rates intentionality, scheming, talking, foreseeing, and surprise from the target space. The result is an impossible blend with animals that are simul- taneously beasts of burden and intentional agents with sophisticated mental capacities.
The central structure of this blended space does not come from the source space alone. The blended space has, for example, causal structure that cannot come from the source of the farm: The donkey’s thought leads to a plan, which leads to the execution of the plan, which leads to the reprieve of the ox, which leads to the donkey’s suffering; but this causal structure cannot come from the space that contains farm animals who do not plan. Only the causal relation between the ox’s languor and the donkey’s use as a plough animal can come from a space that contains regular farm animals. The blended space also has “modal" structure (of possibility, enablement, and so on) that cannot come from the source space of the farm: The donkey’s cunning enables him to devise a plan, and his talking enables him to communicate; but farm animals are not cunning in this way and do not communicate in this way.
The vizier intends to project the causal and modal structure developed in the blend to the hypothetical story of Shahrazad and Shahriyar. He also wants to project the blend's framing of agents because it yields the judgment he pre- fers. The central inference in the blend is that the schemer blindly causes his own suf
fering through his pride and his schemes. It is this inference that the vizier wishes to see projected to the target, in the hope of dissuading his daugh- ter from her plan. It cannot be projected directly from the source to the target because it does not exist in the source. It is instead constructed in a blended space, and then projected to the target.
In the previous four chapters, we used a model of proj ection from one space to another where the projection was direct, one-way, and positive. This model needs refinement. The refinement is blended spaces.
A blended space has input spaces. There is partial projection from the input spaces to the blend. In the tale of the ox and the donkey, the input spaces include the story of real farm animals and the story of Shahrazad. Sometimes, those input spaces will be related as source and target, injust the way we have seen so often. Crucially, blended spaces can develop emergent structure of their own and can project structure back to their input spaces. Input spaces can be not only provid- er: of projections to the blend, but also receiver: of projections back from the
developed blend.
CREATIVE BLENDS Q. 61
BLENDED SPACES
In the tale of the ox and the donkey, the specific agent in the blended space who develops the cunning plan has four legs and enormous ears, eats barley, sleeps on well-sifted straw, and talks. We are not to project the specific attributes four legs, enormous ears, eats 'well-'wimzo'wea' barley, and sleeps on sg'fZea' straw onto Shahrazad in the target space. Talks is projected onto Shahrazad in the target space, or rather, talks is returned to the target whence it came.
One of the great cognitive advantages of a blended space is its freedom to deal in all the vivid specifics-ploughing, straw, barns, planning, talking, deceiving——of both its input spaces. Although the blended space will conform to its own logic, it is free of various constraints of possibility that restrict the input spaces. By means of these specifics from both input spaces, the blended space can powerfully activate both spaces and keep them easily active while we do cog- nitive work over them to construct meaning. Upon that circus of lively informa- tion, the mind can dwell and work to develop a projection.
Let us consider a literary example, Dante's celebrated portrayal of Bertran de Born in the Inferno. While living, Bertran had instigated strife between the king of England and the king's son and heir, tearing father and son apart. VVhen seen in hell, Bertran consists, spectacularly, of two parts: a headless body and its separate head. The body carries the head in its hand, lifting the head manually to talk to Dante on his journey through hell. Bertran cites his punishment as the appropriate analogue of his sin:
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.
Perch'io parti’ cosi giunte persone,
partito porto il meo cerebro, lasso!
dal suo principio ch'e in questo toncone. Cosi s'osserva in me lo contrapasso.
This is an impossible blending, in which a talking human being has an unnaturally divided body. The blend has many parts. First, there is a conven- tional metaphoric understanding: Dividing people socially is understood meta- phorically as dividing ajoined physical object. This metaphoric projection is not at all novel. We can say conventionally that a home wrecker has “come between”
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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 breaking a bond of business, a bond of belief, a bond of loyalty, a bond of trust. None of this inherently involves the specific information of dividing a head from a body.
In this conventional metaphor, spatial proximity, junction, and separation are projected to create an abstract generic space that applies to many different targets, including stories of social and psychological actions. We have already seen such a generic projection in the interpretation of “Look before you leap" as it appears on a slip in a fortune cookie: It suggests an abstract story that applies to many target stories—a business deal, a romantic involvement, even standing up to leave the restaurant. In general, we understand proverbs out of context by projecting a generic interpretation. These generic spaces are a new kind of men- tal space in addition to source and target input spaces. Impossible blending does not occur in them. The information they contain applies to both source and tar- get input spaces. In the case of “separating” father and son, the generic space contains only a unit that is separated and an agent who causes the separation.
In Dante’s portrayal of Bertran de Born, this generic space provides the beginnings for a much fuller space, a “blended" space. The blended space con- tains the abstract information of the generic space; it additionally contains specific information projected from its input spaces. Dante’s blended space takes, from the target, the specific sin and sinner, and, from the source, the source counter- part of the sin: the separation of ajoined physical obj ect. In the hlendedspaee, the source counterpart of the sin is visited upon the target sinner as pun ishment. We can see thejustice of this punishment: 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 infor- mation from the source input space—physical separation of a joined physical obj ect—is applied impossibly to the target human being in a blended space. The blended space contains something impossible for both source and target: a talk- ing 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, just as in the tale of the ox and the donkey, the power and even the existence of central inferences of the projection come not from the source input space and not from the target input space but only from the blended space. The portrayal of Bertran de Born is often quoted out of context as an example of the kind of horrible punishment found in the Inferno. It is not merely bad, but bad in a special way: unnatural, ghastly, violent, destructive of integrity. The bodily division is taken as a sign of this special
CREATIVE BLENDS Q. 63
kind of badness. To be sure, 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 his sin is of a particular sort, given his location in hell. But even such a reader may derive the central inferences from the portrayal itself rather than from an abstract definition of the sin.
Where does the inference arise that this scene signals this kind of badness? Let us consider the background metaphoric projection. In the source space, there may be nothing at all wrong with separating a joined physical object, like shell- ing a pistachio 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 implication that division is wrong——social “parting” 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 interpret this divi- sion as symbolizing something unnatural, ghastly, violent, and 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 will see often, blending is not restricted to combining counterparts. In the set of metaphoric correspondences, the divided object in the source is the coun- terpart of the “divided” father and son in the target, not of Bertran de Born in the t
arget. But in the blend, the divided object and Bertran de Born are combined.
Blends arise often in Dante. “Mahomet,” regarded as the great schismatic who “divided” Christianity, has .y>lit himself in hell. The adulterers Paolo and Francesca, who yielded to the “forces” of passion, are blown hither and yon in hell by a forceful wind over which they have no control. The “uncommitted,” whose sin was that they never took a “stand” or a “position,” must scurry ceaselessly over a place that is—in Dante’s scheme of cosmic geography-—-no'w};ere, lacking all status.
In all these cases, a source story (division, being swept away by wind, mov- ing without stopping) has been projected onto a target story of a particular sin as a way of conceiving that sin. The punishment of that sin resides in a blended space that is fed by source and target input spaces. The punishment comes from the specifics of the source. The damned human being comes from the target. The specific information from the source is applied to the human being from the target in a blended space of retribution.
Dante’s Inferno is an encyclopedic display of local blended spaces, but addi- tionally, at a higher level, it is a single monumental synoptic blended space. Its
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target is the story of Dante’s instruction in theology and philosophy. Its source is the story of ajourney. The blended space combines all the aspects of the story of the journey with all the aspects of the story of instruction in theology and philosophy.