Espaces Mentaux et Intégration Conceptuelle : Retour sur la Constitution de Théories Soeurs

Abstract

This paper is an attempt at describing the origins and the evolution of mental space and conceptual blending theories. The first part depicts the theoretical context in which Fauconnier was immersed, and the kinds of problems his new construct, mental spaces, was designed to solve. Issues pertaining to referential identity and to presupposition had been brought to the fore, notably by generative semanticists, and mental spaces appeared to be a flexible tool to handle them. In the following years, the perspective was broadened and came to encompass questions which, in other frameworks, had involved the notions of conceptual frame, metaphor and analogy. The theory of conceptual blending, as it were, absorbed its elder, and gradually came to resemble a general theory of human cognition and creativity. The formation and the nature of this theory, which was Fauconnier and Turner’s joint enterprise, and the sources it came from, are the subject of our second part. In sum, the history of mental spaces and conceptual blending reflects a development that is also found in the work of other linguists of the cognitive linguistics tradition. On the linguistic side, conceptual blending got linked with studies which give a prominent role to the merging of morphosyntactic constructions, whether these studies be of recent or of more remote origin.