The Literary Mind
Page 10
Dante’s blended spaces are explicitly marked as exotic and literary. Blends of this sort are—like talking animals—vivid. Paradoxically, because they present striking spectacles, they may mislead us into thinking that blends are incongru- ous visual cartoons, unimportant to everyday thought. To be sure, cartoons that use blends are ubiquitous and familiar. Consider the cartoon of the angry char- acter: His skin grows red from his toes to his head in the manner of a boiled thermometer; he flips his lid while steam shoots from his ears. This is certainly a blend, based on the conventional metaphoric projection that connects heated objects to angry human beings. But it is only one kind of blend, and not the most interesting kind. Most blending is covert and undetectable except on analysis. Most blends are unrelated to visualization, to exotic incompatibilities, to struc- tural clash, or to emotion. The essential cognitive work done by blended spaces is often invisible.
Let us consider a slightly less exotic example of a blended space, from Shake- speare’s King ]o}m. It occurs in a scene that involves no cartoonish impossibili- ties and no visualization of clashes. On the contrary, a member of the audience, watching the scene, would see only a messenger, looking fearful, who comes before the king. Kingjohn, recognizing the disturbance in the messenger’s face, says:
So foul a sky clears not without a storm. Pour down thy weather.
We could read this passage simply as asking us to project directly from source to target: The appearance of the sky projects to the appearance of the face; the bad weather projects to the bad message; the event of precipitation projects to the act of delivering the message; and so on. This projection is familiar to us as an instance of the conduit metaphor: a message is an object in a container; com- munication is transferring an object spatially from the speaker to the heater.
So far, so good. But there is a more sophisticated customary reading. King John speaks these lines at a moment in the play when everything is falling apart, when there is a confrontation of the first magnitude over who or what is in com- mand, and it is a question whether King John can survive the forces gathering against him. He has apparentlyjust succeeded in having the rightful heir to the throne, Arthur, killed, which causes powerful nobles to defect, no doubt taking with them a worrisome following of lesser nobles. In certain subtle ways, King
CREATIVE BLENDS Q. 65
John is becoming something other than king, increasingly represented as having never been king. He is a king who is not a king. The activities and economies KingJohn normally commands are rapidly escaping him. He tries to command what he no longer commands. He may appear to be in command, events may happen that seem to conform to his command, but his command is losing sta- tus. He is not na‘i‘ve—he realizes that his command is a conundrum. This is a subtle reading. To arrive at this reading requires a blended space, in which the messenger, the prime example of something absolutely under the king’s com- mand, is also nature, the prime example of something that is absolutely above the king’s command. This is a combination of contraries impossible outside the blend. KingJohn is commanding what he can command, but what he can com- mand turns out to be simultaneously what he cannot command. The tension and instability in King John’s command is presented symbolically. It is a powerful and significant paradox.
The blend necessary for this reading combines, from the source, the inevi- table release of weather that is subject to no one’s control, and, from the target, King John’s intentional control over the intentional messenger. The manifest tension between the lack of control and the exercise of control provides the cen- tral inference of the subtle reading. But the tension is not in the source: in the source space that includes nature, human command plays no role at all, and King John is not mad like Lear and would not dream of trying to command the weather. The tension is not present in the target, either: King John can indeed command messengers absolutely to deliver their bad news. The tension cannot be imported to the target directly from the source because the target would defeat it: the messenger is absolutely and rigidly under the command of King John. Indeed, the messenger’s complete subordination to the king in the target is reinforced by this very scene in which John commands and the messenger performs accord- ingly. We do not construe this passage as saying of the target thatjust as King John cannot command nature, so he cannot command the messenger. That is clearly false: He can and does command the messenger.
It is only in the blended space that King John is revealed in a situation of conflict: He both commands and lacks command at the same moment and in the identical respect. In the blended space, he is giving commands that are simul- taneously appropriate and inappropriate, simultaneously routine and absurd. This is a fundamentally unstable position. It is the basis of the sophisticated reading that King John’s command is profoundly troubled and conflicted.
The tension of the blended space is reinforced by a corollary blending of impossibilities. King John is above the messenger metaphorically, in the sense of having power over him. He is probably above him spatially: The messenger may be kneeling. By contrast, any human being on earth is below a raining sky
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both metaphorically and spatially: The human being is subject to the power of the sky and is also literally below it. In the blended space, King John is literally and figuratively above the messenger but literally and figuratively below the sky. He is simultaneously above and below the messenger-sky. This paradox is com- pacted into a single expression: “Pour down!” This would be a very odd thing to say to a messenger who is kneeling. In the source space of people and skies,,John is simply below; in the target space of kings and their dominions, he is simply above. Only in the blended space is he both, a clash of the most significant violence.
This presentation of John as inhabiting an impossibly unstable position has been read as constituting the power and memorability of this passage, and as distinguishing it from insipid expressions such as “he has a stormy countenance.” But the central inferences of this subtle reading are unavailable except from the blended space. The reading of these two lines as conveying on their own that something is seriously wrong in the structure of John’s kingship comes neither from the source of weather and people nor the target of kings and messengers. It comes only from the blended space. The projection is not direct from source to target.
The work of this blended space involves disanalogy between the source and the target. We do not simply suppress lack of correspondence between source and target. On the contrary, information from the source that does not corre- spond to the target and cannot be projected onto the target is brought into the blended space exactly so we can understand the difference between the source and the target, and thereby recognize the clash. The projection is therefore sig- nificantly negative. We have seen that the projection is not direct; now we see that it is not essentially positive. The model of projection as direct and positive from source to target will not capture the central inference of these two lines.
The scene is profoundly ironic, exactly because in the blended space there is an ironic tension between the image schemas. Without the blend, there would be no tension, and without the tension, there would be no irony. To explain the cognitive result of irony in this case requires a model of conceptual projection that acknowledges the role of blended spaces.
We often encounter linguistic marks of blended spaces. The passage from Kin g jolm contains a lovely example: “thy weather.” Possessive pronouns like “thy” or “your" can be used with a noun to indicate possession and control, as in “thy riches” or “your coat,” since riches and coats can be under human control. They can be used with a noun like “weather” to indicate association, as in "Your weather is better than mine.” But in the blended space, they can exceptionally be used to indicate possession and control of “weather”: The messenger-nature possesses and controls the message-weather. “Thy” with this meaning of control comes
CREATIVE BLENDS Q. 67
from the
target; “weather” with its meaning comes from the source; “thy weather" combines vocabulary from the source and the target. But “Pour down thy weather” combines more than vocabulary: Semantically, the verb “pour” is connected to the weather of the source space, but its use in the imperative mode—to indicate command—comes from the target space, where one intentional agent can com- mand a second agent to perform the action encoded in the verb. The single word “pour” in this sentence blends linguistic structure associated with both the source and the target.
Because I have introduced blended spaces with examples from the high lit- erary canon—The Thousand and One Ni ghts, Dante, and Shakespeare—it would be easy to make the mistake of thinking that blending is a special device of lit- erature. The everyday mind is essentially literary. Everyday logic and language depend upon blending. Fauconnier andI originally demonstrated this point with the following example, taken from the world's premier sailing rag, Latitude .38:
As we went to press, Rich Wilson and Bill Biewenga were barely main- taining a 4.5 day lead over the ghost of the clipper Northern Light, whose record run from San Francisco to Boston they’ re trying to beat. In 1853, the clipper made the passage in 76 days, 8 hours.
In the space of 1853,Northern Light makes a passage. In the space of 1993, Greatflmeriea II makes the same passage, although, given the inevitable differ- ences in weather and sea conditions in the two spaces, and the considerable dif- ferences in performance between a high-tech racing catamaran and a huge wooden clipper ship laden with cargo, they surely did not follow the identical course in detail. In neither space is there a race. But in the blended space, there is a race between GreatAmeriea II and the ghost ofNorthern Light. Readers eas- ily distinguish and manipulate these three spaces, and they know what each space is good for. No one imagines that the writer believes in ghost ships. No one imagines that, should Great America II capsize (as did its predecessor, Great America), Northern Lightwill come along from behind to rescue the rival crew.
Here we come to a fundamental widening of our investigation of parable. So far in this book, for the sake of pedagogical sequence, we have considered only those cases of parable where one of the stories is a source and the other is its target—the target is conceived, at least in part, by projection from the source. After looking at the principles of source-target parables, we detected the role of blended spaces: We saw that the source and the target are input: to the blend and that the blend can project back to the source and target input spaces. Often, the essential projections go from the blended space to the target input space. This is the case for the tale of the ox and the donkey, for Dante, and for King John.
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But now we see something quite new. Input spaces to the blend do not have to be related as source and target. Consider the boat race. Clearly this is concep- tual projection from input stories, which I will call 1853 and 1993. In each story, there is only one boat, no race, and no chance of a “lead.” Projecting structure from 1853 and 1993 to a blend helps us create a blended story of a boat race, where there are two boats, one with a “lead” over the other. That blended story helps us understand the relationship between the inputs. It gives us a way to integrate the entire situation into one blended story, without erasing what we know of its independent inputs. But 1853 is not a source for 1993; 1993 is not a source for 1853. Neither is a target for the other; neither is conceived by projec- tion from the other. For example, we do not understand the catamaran by pro- jection from the clipper ship the way we understand Death—in-general by pro- jection from an agent who enforces departure or the way we understand a cause by metaphoric projection from a mother. Hereafter, I will speak of input spaces and blended spaces. VVhen the input spaces are related as source and target, I will call them the source input space and the target input space, or, where there is no pos- sibility of confusion, just source and target.
In parabolic blending, the input spaces are often rhetorically unequal. For example, in the boat race, it is 1993 that the reporter cares about and talks about. It is 1993 that he wants to understand and report fully. Iwill say that 1993 is the topic space of the parabolic projection. A topic space is not necessarily a target space. Ninteen ninety-three is a topic space but not a target space with 1853 as its source. It is possible, as we will see later, for there to be more than one topic space. It is also possible for the topic space to shift: If we are descendants of the captain of Northern Light, it may be 1853 that we care about understanding. It is even possible, as Seana Coulson has shown, for the source input space to be the topic space.
The blended space includes an imaginary race; inferences can be made in that blended space and projected to the topic space of 1993: Greatflmerica II is doing well, is moving fast enough, is accomplishing its goal. The blended space does not merely compare positions of two ships; it calls up the conceptual frame of a race. The blend therefore contains structure not contained in either of the two input spaces. This frame provides emotions and intentions of the crew and of fans, which can be transferred to the space of 1993. A victory party, with all the standard rituals and conventional photographs, was held for the crew of'Great America II and reported in the customary fashion in Latitude .38. The blended space made a profound mark on the feelings and actions of everyone involved. The blended space left its trace on reality.
In the cases of Bertran de Born and the messenger in Kin g john, impossible conjunctions were exploited inferentially—for example, we were able to draw an
CREATIVE BLENDS Q. 69
inference of irony from the discordant image schemas in the King John blend. But in the sailboat race, the impossibility of the two ships’ racing is merely prag- matic—-there is nothing in the structure of the race that is impossible, merely the extraneous difference in the years during which the two boats existed—and this merely pragmatic impossibility is irrelevant to the central inferences. Blends are in general not constructed merely to present some spectacular clash or exotic impossibility. Suppose someone says, “Four and a half days may seem like an insurmountable lead, but maybe it isn't: Greatflmeriea II looks as if she will be becalmed when she enters the Caribbean, but Northern Light will have a gale behind her and could pick up enough time to sail right through Greatflmeriea II.” In this case, the blend incorporates fabulous elements impossible outside the blend, such as one ship's sailing through another unharmed, but that impossibil- ity is merely pragmatic and we draw no inferences of irony from that impossibility.
The blended space of the boat race is not constructed exclusively by fusing counterparts from the input spaces. There are many counterpart connections between the space of 1853 and 1993: The catamaran and the clipper are coun- terparts, as are their courses, their starting points, and their destinations. Many of these counterparts are fused in the blend: The two courses are fused into one course, for example, the way the messenger in Kingjobn is fused with nature. But the catamaran and the clipper are not fused into each other in the blend. The catamaran and the clipper are distinct in the blend.
The passage in Latitude 38 sets up an independent conceptual domain—of ghost ships and imaginary races. It is specific to the blend; it does not belong to either input space. This extra and fantastic conceptual domain helps us to notice the existence of the blend. But blended spaces do not have to set up their own independent conceptual domains and do not have to make us realize consciously that we are doing any blending. For example, the passage in Latitude 38 could easily have read, “At last report, Greatflmerita II was 4.5 days ahead ofNort}Jern Light.” Here, with the same blend but without the mention of phantom ships, we might not realize consciously that we have constructed the blend. Another way to set up the “impossible” blended space so as to provide the right infer- ences would be to exploit the standard counterfactual construction: “If the two ships were racing, Greatflmeriea II would be 4.5 days ahead of Northern Light at this point."
Projecting inferences from the blend to an
input space is not a simple mat- ter of copying all of the inferences in the blend to the input space. We know how the blend connects to its input spaces, and we know how inferences in the blend correspond to inferences possible in the input spaces. Projecting inferences from the blend to an input space often involves selecting or translating them to fit the input space. For example, the inference in the blend that Great/fmeriea II
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is a long way ahead of Northern Light is not appropriate for the space of 1993', but the corollary inference that GreotAmeriea II is doing Well is appropriate for the space of 1993, and can be projected from the blend to the space of 1993.
There are several different ways to make the appropriate inferences in the blend and project them appropriately to the space of 1993. For example, how do we construct a scenario in the blend in which Greatflmerita II is “4.5 days ahead” of Northern Li ght? There are several possibilities. In one reading, Greotflmeriea II reached a particular geographical position after sailing a certain length of time, and Northern Light did not reach that position until it had sailed a length of time longer by 4.5 days. In another reading, Northern Light and Greotflmerieo II sailed the same length of time, at the end of which Northern Lighthad reached a geo- graphical position that Greotflmeriea IIhad reached after sailing a length oftime shorter by 4.5 days. It is tempting to imagine that these are equivalent statements of the same situation, but they are in general not, and, given the realities of sail- ing, they are in practice almost certainly not. In the first reading, the difference of 4.5 days comes from the space of 1853, and it is Northern Light that does the 4.5 days of sailing. In the second reading, the difference of 4.5 days comes from the space of 1993, and it is Greotflmeriea II that does the 4.5 days of sailing.