ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an informal view of the phenomena, their complexity, and importance for psychologists interested in language and thought. The technical description of mental space phenomena is developed in a number of publications. The chapter gives an idea of the elaborate backstage cognition that operates behind everyday utterances through spoken or signed modalities. Sanders and Redeker, Cutrer, and Mushin provide fascinating case studies and elaborations of the mental space model to deal with them. Rubba shows how multiple spaces are constructed on the basis of sparse linguistic information and elaborate, but covert, cultural and cognitive models. Work by Hutchins shows how conceptual blending uses material anchors to produce situated behavior, such as navigation of ships and planes. Coulson developed integration accounts of rhetorical strategies, noun and adjective compounding, and argumentative counterfactuals. The role of conceptual blending in grammar is demonstrated in Mandelblit, Fauconnier and Turner. Mandelblit and Zachar explore some consequences of findings for the epistemology of cognitive science.
