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In ancient navigation, the safety of a ship depended in no small measure on the stability of her anchors, and this crucial role at sea was not overlooked in the ritual symbolism of maritime communities. Accordingly, there is a general consensus on the fact that the anchors deposited at Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age temples were important carriers of meaning for seafaring groups. Nevertheless, little effort has been made to understand the role of anchors in the conceptual world of the ancient seafarers beyond the fact that they were powerful symbols of maritimity. Borrowed and adapted from linguistics, Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) provides the theoretical framework to use material culture as a source for the investigation of ancient thought processes. In this paper, I apply the perspective of CBT to the anchors found at the Late Cypriot sanctuary of Kition-Kathari, with comparisons to those from Byblos and Ugarit, and I examine the cognitive implications of anchors as material metaphors and investigate how they embody the blending of the mental spaces of the sacred, the city, and the sea.

COVID-19 has been one of the most threatening infectious diseases in recent years, and China, the epicenter of this epidemic, has suffered a national image crisis, which calls for urgent actions to achieve self-image construction. The government’s white paper, the window of national ideology, is essential in constructing a national image. In this context, the study aims to conduct an ideological exploration of the white paper “Fighting COVID-19: China in Action”. The study relies on conceptual blending theory and van Dijk’s theory of ideology to develop a theoretical research framework to explore the process of ideological construction of metaphorical structures in the blended space. This study comes to the following three conclusions: (1) metaphorical structures in the blended space try to explain China’s actions to the public and arouse sympathy to persuade readers; (2) conceptual metaphors in this white paper reveal major ideologies: “collectivism,” and “people-oriented value”; (3) these ideologies aim to construct a positive national image: a country willing to take responsibilities and cooperate with the world. In conclusion, conceptual blending theory could provide a valuable apparatus for micro-level study in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), enhancing people’s understanding of conceptual metaphors’ functions in ideological construction.

Neologisms are ubiquitous in language, providing definitive evidence suggesting that humans can use language in a flexible and creative way. Science fiction (sci-fi) neologisms are the lexical manifestation of the creators’ creativity, to which Conceptual Blending Theory constructs a solid theoretical basis. This paper finds that applying Conceptual Blending Theory to translation will provide new insights into sci-fi neologism translation. When there is no corresponding frame in the input spaces of the two languages, translators can choose to project the original word directly into the blended space or construct a new frame in the target language space. When the same or similar frames exist in the two input spaces, translators can directly map the original word to the target language space or adjust the frames according to the translators’ experience, knowledge system, and target language culture to generate an optimal translation.

Much social cognition and action is dialogical in nature and profitably understood from a second-person perspective. The elemental social roles of “debtor” and “creditor” are of great importance in explaining the structure and history of a wide range of social facts and institutions. Yet these person-level experiences of indebtedness and the mental spaces they engender are not sufficient to account for complex social facts. Sovereign money systems are a leading example where our person-level experiences of exchange lead us astray by actively hindering our ability to grasp money’s macroeconomic functions. This article provides a comprehensive account of money as a distributed cognitive phenomenon. It summarizes and critiques a prior analysis of money as a conceptual blend enabling and subsequently advances an alternative “institutional” blending analysis of money as primarily a and . This alternative analysis tracks findings of anthropologists and legal historians of money and banking as well as heterodox economists who make money the centerpiece of their macroeconomic models. The account of money also emphasizes that the underlying logic of sovereign money systems is stubbornly difficult for users of the currency to grasp or accept, as evidenced in a brief televised debate. If money is an instance of institutional blending wherein social structures and their material manifestations have cognitive status, then it recommends a broader argument that human minds themselves are an of neural assemblies, bodily structures and functions, and environmental structures and arrangements.

The present study investigates paradox as a cognitive phenomenon within the framework of conceptual metaphor and metonymy, challenging its conventional classification as a rhetorical device. Focusing on Persian mystical literature, the research explores how paradox functions as a dynamic meaning-making mechanism in figurative language. The primary aim is to redefine paradox through cognitive linguistics, demonstrating its integration with metaphor (para-metaphor) and metonymy (para-metonymy) in restructuring perception. The study seeks to: 1) identify the cognitive models underlying paradox, 2) analyze its interaction with other conceptual processes, and 3) illustrate its role in non-linear thinking and knowledge organization. A descriptive-analytical approach is employed, with data purposively sampled from Persian literary texts. Theoretical frameworks include conceptual blending theory (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002) and Ruiz de Mendoza’s cognitive modeling, emphasizing high-level abstraction and mental space networks. Paradox emerges from metaphorical contradictions (e.g., \"death is life\") and metonymic expansions (e.g., \"weeping with laughter\"), resolving oppositions through conceptual blending. It operates as a matrix-like strategy, enabling reframing and emergent meanings. Persian mystical texts exemplify this capacity to transcend binary logic and evoke multilayered interpretations.

The article aims at pointing out those areas of design in which a structure of metaphor1 can be useful and testing out its sufficiency. The basis for reflection are examples of existing design solutions. Decisions made by designers on the future shape, functionality and appearance of an object are rooted in their knowledge about the material world and human needs, but also transfer their ideas regarding the role and purpose of design itself in social life. The presented examples relate to a specific way of thinking common for designers working on a project. The article argues that a designer's way of thinking can be broadly described using a conceptual blen­ding model rather than a metaphor structure which does not always apply. In Polish literature, conceptual blending, translated as amalgamaty pojęciowe, refers to linguistics and is mostly used in linguistic research. The article proposes a different translation, amalgamaty koncepcyjne, as a broader term which can also be used in visual thinking research, as well as design.

Music occupies a substantial role in the process of making a film and the choice of score is by no means accidental. Given its vast potential to convey emotions, it may be analysed not only from the musicological point of view. A battle of the anthems scene (German soldiers singing “Die Wacht am Rhein” versus French refugees drowning them out with “La Marseillaise” at Rick’s café) from Michael Curtiz’s “Casablanca” (1942) serves as the empirical material in the linguistic analysis made from a multimodal-cum-cognitive perspective. In this article we adopt the six-space model of conceptual integration developed by Brandt and Brandt in 2005 in order to show that a number of various elements, such as the situational context in which the meaning is coined, take part in the process of understanding the message. Specifically, as far as the battle of the anthems scene is concerned, the following mental spaces are involved in the process of meaning construction: semiotic space, presentation space, reference space, virtual space, relevance space and meaning space.

The goal of the following article is to analyse topical allusions to the Earl of Essex in Shakespeare's Henriad in terms of conceptual blending theory in order to shed light on the reception of these plays in the early modern public theatre and to find clues to Shakespeare's intentions.

This paper analyzes image macros via the theoretical framework of conceptual blending on the example of online responses to 2011 and 2012 doomsday predictions. To date, conceptual blending has shown promise in the analysis of a variety of internet memes; however, most studies have been limited to one type of meme or one blending model. This project adds to the discussion in two ways. First, it presents a thematic analysis – image macros responding to end of the world predictions – thereby covering a broader variety of image macro genres. Second, it modifies blending models according to the needs of the different genres. The discussion explores the extent to which the three different image macro genres require different blending models and the implication for future study.

This study identified and analyzed metaphors related to the lived experience of young-onset dementia that were used in nine illness narratives written by people with the condition. A final set of 1111 MEs sorted into 30 source domain categories were grouped according to six target domain categories reflecting the biologic ( the person with dementia’s body/brain ), psychologic ( suffering with dementia, coping with dementia, dementia itself, the person with dementia ), and social ( the social experience of dementia ) aspects of having dementia. Notably, many of the metaphors were similar to previously reported metaphors of illness, such as fight and journey , and other metaphors of embodiment, as well as disease as enemy, body as container , and body as machine . In addition, although negative conceptualizations were in the majority, almost one-third of the metaphoric expressions, belonging to the fight and journey source domain categories, reflected mainly positive images. The commonality of metaphor types with those of other illness experiences supports the notion of shared metaphors across illness contexts. Moreover, in contrast to the dehumanizing and stigmatizing terms that have previously been used to socially construct dementia, the positivity of metaphoric images identified here indicates the authors’ proactive and affirming conceptualizations of their experience of dementia. Health care professionals can draw on this study’s findings to help their own patients make sense of and cope with dementia.