A Tentative Study On Meaning Construction In Reading In The Light Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Conceptual Integration (Blending) theory, as a major force in cognitive linguistics, has been developing rapidly and is drawing more and more attention from the academic community. Initiated by Fauconnier, it provides a unifying umbrella framework for a range of cognitive phenomena behind language use.Reading, as one of the cognitive activities through which people communicate with the outside world, can be seen as a process in which readers try to get information encoded in the text by decoding and reconstructing linguistic and semiotic information obtained through visual operations. In handling this visual information, readers are involved in complex cognitive and psychological activities, such as identifying, memorizing, analyzing, inferring, predicting and recreating.This paper attaches great importance to the cognitive and psychological process readers undergo in the reading process and, after reviewing basic notions of conceptual integration theory and related theoretical problems concerning reading, the author arrives at a conclusion that readers' meaning construction is a result of their continual establishment and integration of mental spaces.