Gilles Fauconnier

Gilles Fauconnier (1944-2021) was a linguist and cognitive scientist associated with mental spaces theory and, with Mark Turner, conceptual blending. He was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego.

Life and research

The memorial written by Eve Sweetser, Seana Coulson and Mark Turner records Fauconnier's death on 3 February 2021. It describes his early training in mathematics and physics, his linguistics PhD at UC San Diego in 1971, and subsequent doctorates in Paris. His research included reference, negation, conditionals and the construction of meaning. International Cognitive Linguistics Association memorial.

Mental spaces

Mental spaces are small, temporary structures used in constructing meaning during thought and discourse. They help keep track of possibilities, beliefs, remembered events and imagined situations. They should not be equated with physical regions of the brain or with complete bodies of knowledge.

For example, "In the novel, the city survives" establishes a setting in which a statement can hold without asserting that an actual city survived. Comparing what happens in the novel with what a character believes introduces a further distinction between viewpoints. These are illustrative examples of the kind of meaning construction the theory addresses. Fauconnier, "Meaning, Language, Cognition".

Conceptual blending

Fauconnier and Turner developed conceptual blending as an account of how selected elements from different inputs can combine in a mental space with emergent structure. The blend is not simply a mixture of every property of the inputs. Connections, selection and further elaboration matter.

Their work considers metaphor alongside other forms of reasoning and imagination. Blending and conceptual metaphor theory are related areas of inquiry, but a two-domain mapping and a blending network should not be presented as identical descriptions. Turner's research collection on blending and conceptual integration.

Reading and related pages

• Conceptual Blending and Mental Spaces
• Conceptual Metaphor Theory
• Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language.
• Mappings in Thought and Language (1997).
• The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities (2002), with Mark Turner. The author's research collection above provides publication information and papers.
• Metaphor Categories
• Idiomatic, Literal and Figurative Communication

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