Computation and Blending

Recent work into the cognitive foundations of conceptual integration and blended mental spaces provides a unifying umbrella framework for a range of cognitive 'siblings' that have traditionally been studied with relative independence, such as metaphor, analogy, concept combination, grammaticalization, counterfactual thought, and abstract problem solving. The 'many-space' or 'conceptual integration networks' theory of Fauconnier and Turner (1994; 1998) is an elaboration of the two-space model of metaphor that has been the corner-stone of the metaphor field since Aristotle (see Hutton, 1982), and which has underpinned a string of conceptual theories from Nietzsche (see Culler, 1980) through Richards (1936), Black (1962), Koestler (1964) to Lakoff and Johnson (1980). These theories posit a metaphor (or by extension, its cognitive siblings) to concern the interaction of two conceptual spaces; the space which is described by the metaphor has variously been termed the target, the tenor or the topic, while the space that provides the description has been called the source, the vehicle or the base