Discourse as Blending: Beyond Langacker’s (2001) Analysis

Within the framework of blending operations (Fauconnier & Turner 2002), this paper reexamines Langacker’s (2001) theory of discourse, and suggests that the discourse can be viewed as the cumulative consequences of blending operations. In conclusion, the paper shows that the blending analysis of discourse can have the following advantages: (i) The discourse is explainable just in assuming the blending operation, without Current Discourse Space and Viewing Frame. (ii) While Langacker’s analysis cannot explicitly capture the conceptual overlap, the blending analysis can assign this to Generic Spaces. (iii) Langacker’s analysis confuses thesentential operations with the contextual ones, whereas the blending analysis can attribute this tothe division between Input Spaces and Blended Spaces. (iv) In Langacker’s analysis, the formallevel remains somewhat obscure. However, the blending analysis can cancel this drawback, for itallows the formal blending.