ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of Blending Theory. This approach derives from Mental Spaces Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, but differs from both in that it explicitly accounts for emergent structure: the idea that meaning construction often results in meaning that is 'more than the sum of its parts'. While Blending Theory arose from concerns linguistic structure and the role of language in meaning construction, conceptual blending is argued to be a fundamental cognitive operation that is central to general properties of human thought and imagination. Sweetser discusses the role of conceptual blending in human ritual. She argues that one purpose of ritual is to depict a particular scenario. However, although blending is a conceptual operation that can be invoked by language and that can also affect linguistic forms themselves, the blending operation itself, like the other cognitive processes that underlie cognitive semantics, is thought to be independent of language.
