A Conceptual Blending Theory Interpretation Of The Mixed Metaphor

As a kind of special language phenomenon, the mixed metaphor combines two or more seemingly incompatible or even logically contradictory metaphors together for a striking communicative effect. Traditionally, however, the academic community regard the mixed metaphor as an unacceptable misuse of figure of speech.In recent years, this interesting and fascinating language phenomenon is drawing more and more attention from scholars at home or abroad. At present, the research of the mixed metaphor is mostly focused on and limited to a linguistic explanation of its rhetoric effects. Mainly based on the framework of Conceptual Blending Theory, the present thesis presents a tentative and supplementary model to visualize and explain the cognitive process and generative mechanism of the mixed metaphor.Fauconnier and Turner put forward the famous four-space theory of Conceptual Blending in order to explore the meaning construction process of natural language. The whole process goes through a series of cognitive activities in which elements from different mental spaces are selectively projected to the blended in order to produce a new conceptual structure. Accomplishment of the blending takes three periods: composition, completion and elaboration, involving four spaces: Input space I, input space II, generic space and blending space.However, the two input spaces of the mixed metaphor are two unrelated and incompatible metaphors, which means in on-line meaning construction, clashes will be brought about in the process of mapping the two spaces because the logical and imagery elements in the two inputs are contradicted with each other. For the lack of counterpart connections, the blending of inputs comes to a dead end. Therefore, we add contextual analysis to the modified conceptual blending model in order to fill in the social cultural knowledge for activating the counterpart elements. This process will eliminate contradictions between the two input spaces and make the blending feasible.The present thesis aims at giving a new interpretation of understanding the mixed metaphor on the basis of a modified conceptual blending model in order to prove that the mixed metaphor is understandable, meaningful and universal as it is in both English and Chinese. At the same time, we conclude that Conceptual Blending is powerful in illustrating the seemingly illogical linguistic phenomenon. When our contextual analysis is supplemented to break through the contradictory relations of the input spaces by selectively “activating” the counterpart elements in the process of constructing a new logic and understanding the implication of the mixed metaphor.