Generic integration templates for fictive communication Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas, University of Navarra Mark Turner, Case Western Reserve University For all animals, communication is a matter of the here and now. Not even the most cognitively-advanced apes seem to mix the present situation with an exchange from the past, report past communicative events, or interact in fictional scenarios. Human beings, on the other hand, are extremely good at it. Fictive communication (Coulson & Pascual 2006; Pascual 2006; Pascual et al. 2013) is one of the clearest examples of our advanced capacities for conceptual integration (Fauconnier & Turner 2002), the higher-order cognitive capacity that allows us to integrate disparate elements into novel, meaningful conceptual wholes. Although every instance of blending might look extremely creative and unique, there are generic, recurrent patterns of integration (Fauconnier 2009; Turner 2014; Pagán Cánovas 2010). These patterns can be transmitted by culture, and mastering them allows us to be fast and efficient in performing individual conceptual blends. Two decades of research into conceptual integration have exposed an impressive number of “Generic Integration Templates” (GITs), that is, generic integration networks that are not in themselves full and specific integration networks or expressed as such, but that operate as established patterns used to inform specific integration networks. This presentation analyzes how fictive communication is made possible by GITs. First we examine the basic templates for fictive interaction, and then we move to the more specific patterns for building fictive communication. We distinguish a variety of GITs that intervene in the process, with different possible outcomes: no interaction in the inputs but only in the blend, interaction in the inputs with an emergent, meaningful interaction in the blend, splitting the self to create fictive conversations, etc. By situating fictive communication within a theory of GITs, we can more easily point at the particularities of conceptual integration in discourse, as opposed to nondiscursive cognitive activity. References Coulson, S. & Pascual, E., 2006. For the sake of argument: Mourning the unborn and reviving the dead through conceptual blending. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 4(1), pp.153–181. Fauconnier, G., 2009. Generalized integration networks. New directions in cognitive linguistics, pp.147–160. Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M., 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities, New York: Basic Books. Pagán Cánovas, C., 2010. Erotic Emissions in Greek Poetry: A Generic Integration Network. Cognitive Semiotics, 6, pp.7–32. Pascual, E., 2006. Fictive interaction within the sentence: A communicative type of fictivity in grammar. Cognitive Linguistics, 17(2). Pascual, E., Królak, E. & Janssen, T.A.J.M., 2013. Direct speech compounds: Evoking socio-cultural scenarios through fictive interaction. Cognitive Linguistics, 24(2). Turner, M., 2014. The origin of ideas: blending, creativity, and the human spark. Forthcoming in Oxford University Press NY.
