Mark Turner Spring 2001. In this course, we will focus on the role of blending in literature, language, and film. A great range of additional works, many of them legible on the web, can be found on the Website for Blending and Conceptual Integration.
Conceptual blends arise from conceptual integration.
Conceptual integration is an indispensable general cognitive operation on a par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing. It serves a variety of cognitive purposes. It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar. It often performs new work on its previously entrenched products.