The cognitive theory of mental spaces and conceptual integration (MSCI) is a twenty-year-old, cross-disciplinary enterprise that presently unfolds in academic circles on many levels of reflection and research. One important area of inquiry where MSCI can be of immediate use is in the pragmatics of written and spoken discourse and interaction. At the same time, empirical insights from the fields of interaction and discourse provide a necessary fundament for the development of the cognitive theories of discourse. This collection of seven chapters and three commentaries aims at evaluating and developing MSCI as a theory of meaning construction in discourse and interaction. MSCI will benefit greatly not only from empirical support but also from clearer refinement of its methodology and philosophical foundations. This volume presents the latest work on discourse and interaction from a mental spaces perspective, surely to be of interest to a broad range of researchers in discourse analysis.
Contributions by: Line Brandt, Paul Chilton, Alan Cienki, Seana Coulson, Barbara Dancygier, Anders Hougaard, Gitte R. Hougaard, David S. Kaufer, Todd Oakley, Esther Pascual, and Robert F. Williams.
“This is a stimulating collection of papers that links Fauconnier and Turner's insights about the importance of conceptual blending for the organization of human cognition in to the study of discourse. Most crucially, in line with contemporary research in fields such as ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, discursive psychology and distributed cognition, the volume is a sustained effort to move the conceptual processes that blending focuses on from inside the human mind into the domain of public discursive practice. By investigating both a diverse range of discourse genres including fiction, dialogic interviews, journal articles, courtroom interaction and radio call-in shows, as well as activities such as telling time, these papers demonstrate in most interesting way how discourse and practical action can be seen as the crucial environments for an important range of cognitive processes that are central to conceptual integration.”
Charles Goodwin, Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of California at Los Angeles
“A fascinating exploration of mental space phenomena as they occur in a wide range of rich real life settings. The authors take us on a remarkable intellectual journey, with brilliant analyses along the way, and far-reaching implications for the understanding of the human mind.”
Gilles Fauconnier, Professor of Cognitive Science, University of California at San Diego
Forthcoming from Peter Lang Verlag
European Semiotics: Language Cognition and Culture Series, Volume 8
(September 2008)
From Attention to Meaning: Explorations in Semiotics, Linguistics, and Rhetoric
by Todd Oakley
Of all the tasks one performs, perhaps none is more consequential for the performance of other tasks than paying attention. When you attend, you perceive. When you attend and perceive, you remember. When you attend, perceive, and remember, you learn. When you learn, you can act deliberately and strategically. Perceiving, thinking, learning, deciding, and acting require the constant adjustement of the attention system. Oakley proposes a model of the greater attention system as comprising three distinct but interrelated sub-systems: the signal system; the selection system; and the interpersonal system, with eight elements distributed among them: alerting, orienting, detecting, sustaining, controlling, sharing, harmonizing, and directing. The chapters in this book develop an "attentional" analysis of meaning under this model and within the unifying theoratical framework of Mental Spaces Theory, a theory predicated on the notion that all meaning is involves the composition, completion, and elaboration of imagistic scenes and scenarios interacting with networks of other scenes and scenarios.
Each chapter explores the implications of an attenion-based approach to meaning for research in semiotics, linguistics, and rhetoric. Data for these explorations originate from the author's own fieldwork carried out in cultural institutions in the United States.
Recent Publications in Mental Spaces Theory
Special Issue of Cognitive Linguistics 10.3/4 (2000)
on Coneptual Blending
Edited by Seana Coulson & Todd Oakley
Special Issue of Journal of Pragmatics 37.10 (October 2005)
on Coneptual Blending
Edited by Seana Coulson & Todd Oakley
