Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 1
lanci – Articles - Artikel
UDC 81'23
159.922.2:81
Original scientific paper
Received on 31.01. 2009.
Accepted for publication on 10.07. 2009.
Mária Palkó
University of Szeged
Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
in a metaphorical visual blend
This paper investigates some aspects of culturally salient and entrenched visual
elements, identified as cultural stereotypes, cultural icons, and cultural symbols.
An editorial cartoon is analyzed according to the network model of mental spaces
from Fauconnier and Turner’s Blending Theory in order to demonstrate the im-
portance of such visual elements in producing and unpacking conceptual blends.
Cultural stereotypes, cultural icons, and cultural symbols are described as distinct
strategies for compressing large and diffuse socio-cultural reality.
Key words: Blending Theory; visual blend; compression; cultural stereotype; cul-
tural icon; cultural symbol.
1. Introduction
Analyzing visual blends is an integral part of Blending Theory (BT). Some car-
toon interpretations, such as Fauconnier and Turner (1994), and Coulson (2005)
focus on metaphorical and metonymical projections established in visual set-
tings. Typical to such visual representations is the concretization of abstract con-
ceptual relations with physical properties, such as form and color. However, in
case of editorial cartoons with deliberate socio-cultural messages, these concre-
tizations must also serve as highly representative signals—known as prompts in
BT—for complex human group relations. But how exactly does this happen?
Mária Palkó:
2 Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
How can a pictorial composition prompt for a much larger socio-cultural reality?
In the following analysis I shall argue that a visual representation is able to
communicate rich and diffuse socio-cultural background information, through
the exploitation of certain visual elements, which are highly specified and en-
trenched in a culture. The scope of this paper is to emphasize the importance of
these culturally salient visual elements in creating and interpreting visual blends.
Its contribution to the study of conceptual blends consists in an endeavor to pro-
vide a structured and descriptive account of culturally salient visual elements as
different strategies for compressing a much larger socio-cultural reality.
2. Theoretical background
In Blending Theory meaning arises from the co-existence and co-operation of at
least four separable mental spaces: two or more input spaces, containing infor-
mation about certain conceptual domains considered relevant for the on-going
communication, a generic space, with abstract structures, which are common to
all input spaces, and a blended space, where selected information from all input
spaces is projected, and where unexpected, new meanings can emerge. As
shown by Fauconnier and Turner (2003: 30), one of the central benefits of con-
ceptual blends is their ability to provide compressions to human scale of diffuse
arrays of reality. For example a culture, with everything and everybody belong-
ing to it, is too diffuse and too large a reality to be comprehended by any human
being as a whole. Human scale situations on the other hand are easily appre-
hended by humans, because they “typically have very few participants, direct in-
tentionality, and immediate effect” (2003: 312). Compression to human scale
happens then by selective projection from the input spaces and integration in the
blend. It is possible, for example, to compress a whole group by picking one
member and “pretending that there is a homogeneous nature, experience, and
behavior for all members of the group” (2003: 117). In case of culturally rele-
vant visual representations such selected elements need to be concretely depict-
able and to be able to signal in themselves a complexity of abstract human rela-
tions.
3. Data
The cartoon in the appendix has been chosen for analysis as it displays several
culturally salient visual elements, which are results of different compression
strategies, making it possible to take a closer look at the role of culturally deter-
mined visual elements in creating and understanding visual blends. Originally
Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 3
published as an illustration to the New York Times cover story on the 25th of
January 2001, the cartoon appeared with a striking title fitting for cover stories:
“Mining the ‘Deep Web’ With Sharper Shovels.” One can discover incongruities
in the picture at first sight. Humanoid robots are digging, hacking their ways
down in a dark, earth color matter. Surprisingly, it is not some kind of valuable
raw material or precious ore that emerges from under the ground, but computers,
household articles, newspaper sites, musical instruments, laboratory tools,
books, antiques: old-fashioned TV, radio, typewriter, and so on. What makes the
cartoon more surprising, even humorous, is the robots` clothing. For example,
one of the robots is digging in a suit and a high hat, while the other one in a
medical examination robe and a stethoscope, but a third one is just as humorous
with its shopping basket and shopping cart. Obviously, the representation is aim-
ing to communicate not so much about digging and hacking, but about some-
thing more abstract, although the scene represented evokes the frame of mine
work. This surprisingly ambiguous mixture of elements is an open appeal to in-
terpret it as a metaphorical blend and unpack its mental spaces.
4. Analysis
In this case, cues that lead to a metaphorical interpretation are not merely pic-
torial, since the dominant metaphorical structure operative in the cartoon world
is established by an external hint: the printed text with bold capital letters,
placed on the same page, which we conventionally identify as the title of the
artwork. This is not at all surprising, since cartoons are by default composites of
symbolic modes, constantly crossing the image-text boundary. “Mining the
‘Deep Web’ with Sharper Shovels’ can be regarded as a prompt to establish the
main mental spaces and cross-space connections of the metaphorical network. It
prompts us to set up a mental space to represent some relevant aspects of mine
work, another mental space to represent some relevant aspects of Deep Web
search, and a blended space where these aspects are integrated, as shown in Fig.
1.
Both input spaces draw on rather conventional knowledge. Everybody knows
that mine workers use shovels, hacks, drills, that they are digging underground
drifts in order to find valuable raw material. On the other hand, many of us
know that robots search the Web (download digital data which are indexed in the
search engine's database), that we can connect to it via computer, we can do
shopping on the Web, or read the latest news, do academic research, attend
courses, listen to music, attend conferences, watch films, exchange mail and so
on. Deep Web is also known as the popular name for that part of the Web, which
cannot be searched directly using general purpose search engines like Google,
Mária Palkó:
4 Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
Yahoo, Msn. Moreover, the article attached to the cartoon draws attention to the
existence of specialized niche search engines. Niche is a well known term in
economy, meaning a specialized area of the market. Niche search engines can be
news search engines, medical search engines, price search engines, academic
search engines, legal search engines, travel search engines, code search engines
and so on.
Generic
Mine work space Deep web search
Blended space
Fig. 1. Network model. The main mental spaces of the network
Niche search is better or more effective - is one of the central inferences. This
idea is also highly supported by the title: “Mining the ‘Deep Web’ With Sharper
Shovels.” Shovels from the mining input have the generic role of instruments
just like search engines in the web search input. Moreover, the attribute sharper
connected to the concept of an instrument conventionally triggers the idea of be-
ing better, faster, more precise, and more effective. Figure 2 shows how this in-
ference can be imported to the Deep Web search space, and connected to the
Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 5
concept of niche search engines.
instrument
gradient of
effectiveness
shovels niche search engines
sharper better
Figure 2. Projection of central inferences
Some of the cross-space connections are globally shared metaphorical projec-
tions, also called “blending templates” (Fauconnier and Turner 2003: 383), like
blending the inanimate and animate (robot and person), or extending the “con-
tainer,” “verticality,” “path,” and “force-dynamic” image schemas from the
physical to the non-physical, in this case from mine to World Wide Web. This
image-schematic structure is not "natural" for the highly abstract domain of the
Web. It is a result of previous blends: for example our notion of the World Wide
Web being some kind of space (hyperspace), or web search being some kind of
motion along a path (surfing, visiting websites, entering or quitting, traveling the
web. At first sight, the mine would correspond to the Deep Web, mine workers
to specialized search robots, different mine drifts to specialized search areas,
mining to Deep Web search, mined matter to niche online information. These
main cross-space connections are shown in Figure 3.
Mária Palkó:
6 Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
mine Deep Web
mine workers specialized search robots
drifts specialized search areas
mining web search
mined matter niche online information
Fig. 3. The main cross-space connections
Humanoid robots are emerging entities, which arise during the process of
composition (Fauconnier and Turner 2003: 42), where elements projected in the
blend, as mine workers from the Mine work input and web search robots from
the Deep Web search input, are fused in a way that creates these new elements,
which were previously not present in either of the input spaces. Interestingly,
what we actually see is not only blending inanimate robots with animate mine
workers, but there is also a highly visible hint to their socio-cultural belonging
and preferences, signaled by their garments and by the objects they are extract-
ing. These hints create the most surprising and humorous effect of all, since un-
der normal circumstances nobody would correlate a high hat showing the Amer-
ican national colors, a shopping cart, or a medical examination robe with either
mine work or search engine robots. These elements seemingly do not belong to
any of the inputs.
Although the robots` clothing and the numerous objects in the mine are con-
nected to none of the input spaces, they arise during the process of completion
(Fauconnier and Turner 2003: 43) of the visual environment. In our case com-
pletion arises through background knowledge and verbal cues from the article:
“news,” “price,” “academic,” “medical” that do have their matches outside the
domains of web engineering or mine work. In a most “logical” way, the carica-
turist projects the robots` scope of activity from the abstract Deep Web search
input: the digital world of news search, price search, academic search and medi-
cal search engines, then she completes the abstract schema visually by drawing
on her background knowledge of (the mainly American) cultural clichés about
the physical appearance of clothes and objects, which conventionally and unmis-
takably connect to such ideas as journalism and politics, shopping, as well as
Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 7
medical practice, and research. Figure 4. represents a sketch of this cognitive
process.
Fig. 4. Completion of an abstract schema with visual elements
from background knowledge
In the blended cartoon world, it becomes possible to set up connections be-
tween mine work, humanoid robots, peculiar clothing, objects, and tools, which
eventually lead to the inference that our first robot is a news search robot with
mainly political inclinations, the second a price search robot, the third an aca-
demic search robot, which mainly searches archives, and the forth one a medical
search robot. Clad in American national colors, a suit and a high hat, the news
search robot is extracting newspapers from a mine drift, where he might also
find several other objects pregnant with American historical and political signi-
ficance, as the White House or the statue of Liberty. In another channel, near the
news search robot, there is a price search robot laboring while also carrying a
shopping basket on its arm, with a shopping basket standing behind it, and mon-
ey showing from its pocket. In its mine drift there is a rich assortment of fancy
goods, household articles, decor articles, musical instruments, toys and so on.
The academic search robot is wearing a coat and a hat that is very similar to
Mária Palkó:
8 Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
what we could repeatedly see on the Indiana Jones figures. It is extracting books
and some kind of documents using its hack. Around its research area we can see
several old-fashioned objects: antiquated models of TV, radio or typewriter. One
of the possible interpretations would be, that these are allusions to archive
search, more exactly to the Internet Archive, which is one of the largest databas-
es of the Deep Web with a huge inventory of text documents as well as audio
and video files. Very suggestive is the medical search robot in its medical ex-
amination robe, a stethoscope around the neck, and mining test-tubes from its
“specialty area,” where a whole lot of things can be found from vials and hypo-
dermic syringe to amoebae.
Clearly, a very general cultural model, or more precisely, cultural practice is
recruited here, according to which many people consciously try to express their
belonging to and preferences of certain social groups, professions or subcultures
by wearing specific clothes and using specific objects. Being a widespread cul-
tural practice, the preference for certain clothes and objects makes it possible to
generalize some recurrent features and later use them as prompts for a whole so-
cio-cultural group (political society, consumer society, historical society, medical
society), a process that Kövecses terms “cultural stereotyping” (2006: 109),
which is a kind of metonymic identity compression. Billions of web users with
similar niche interests are compressed metonymically by homogenizing them
according to stereotypical clothes and objects of use. For example all people,
who might want to search for online medical information, are compressed into a
frame of cliché or stereotype: a person wearing a white medical robe, with a ste-
thoscope around the neck and a medical light on the head, as seen in Figure 5.
We should not forget that all these metonymical identity compressions happen
within a metaphor. Metonymy within metaphor occurs according to Goossens
when “a metonymic mapping is inserted into a metaphoric one” (1995: 174).
The main metaphoric mapping of this cartoon is set up between mine workers
and web search robots, but embedded in it, there are actually several metonymic
mappings tightened together, which are of crucial importance for understanding
the blend. There is a metonymical contiguity between instruments of action
(web search robots) and agents (web users), a contiguity between web users and
their clothes and objects, and a contiguity between a certain category of web us-
ers and one member wearing stereotypical clothes and using stereotypical ob-
jects. This metonymical chain is then compressed together into robots with ste-
reotypical clothes and objects: a cultural stereotype. By having a single robot in
a medical robe, it is possible to represent all web search robots indexing medical
online content and each person using medical search engines. Since their num-
ber would be beyond human comprehension, the cartoonist here employs what
Fauconnier and Turner refer to as compression to human scale (2003: 312).
Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 9
Figure 5. Compressing a cultural stereotype
Metonymic integration of the scene happens at the expense of preserving the
agent-instrument relationship. Consider the agent-instrument relationship in both
the Mine space and the Deep Web search space. In mine work the agents are
human mineworkers and the instruments might range from shovels, hacks, drills
to more modern technology. In the Deep Web search space agents are web engi-
neers, designing and controlling search robots, and users (also typically human)
who might have special niche interests. They can be medical people with health
care interests, academicians interested in history, people who want to buy some-
thing, or read the latest news. Web search robots in this space have the function
of instruments. In the blend we have fused agents, who look half human, half
robot, are extracting things like mine workers usually do, but have clothes and
objects that—drawing on our active cultural stereotypes—prompt us to identify
them as clearly belonging to other socio-cultural groups than mine workers. A
humanoid robot, doing mine work with a shopping cart, a shopping basket, and
cash in the pocket, will connect to a mine worker in the Mine work input, and at
the same time to both web search robot and web user, who wants to do some
shopping, in the Deep Web search input. These fused agents, as shown in Figure
6 reflect projections not only from the agents in the Mine work space (mine
workers) and agents in the Deep Web search space (niche web users), but also
from the instruments in the Deep Web search space (robots).
Mária Palkó:
10 Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
Fig. 6. Combining and fusing agents and instrument in the blend.
As we have seen, the integration network is combining and fusing one ele-
ment from the Mine work input (agent: mine worker) with more than one ele-
ment (agent: niche web user, and instrument: web search robot) from the Deep
Web search input. Coulson and Oakley (2003), and Fauconnier and Turner
(1999) analyze similar examples, where an element in the blended space con-
nects to two elements in one input space via metonymical compression of ele-
ments. As analyzed by Fauconnier and Turner (1999), blends can actually com-
bine non-counterpart elements that come from different inputs. In our case,
mined matter in the Mine work input is a counterpart of niche information in the
Deep Web search input, not of car, book, typewriter or planet. On the other hand,
websites with specific niche content being quite abstract, cannot in themselves
Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 11
provide concrete, specific elements required by the pictorial mode of representa-
tion. But information about “something” can be metonymically connected to
that “something,” where referent (or more precisely a pictorial representation of
the referent) stands for concept (information). Thus, the blend is free to combine
mined matter with a large number of “somethings” like car, book, typewriter,
planet, and so on. Due to these metonymies, not the concept of niche informa-
tion, but the numerous objects represented in the cartoon will combine with
mined matter. Their more or less random position in their specific drifts comes
from the topology of mines, where mined matter lies in natural, unorganized
way. A simple representation of this process can be seen in Figure 7.
Fig. 7. Combining non-counterpart elements in the blend
Household articles, buildings, medical equipment, and other objects lying ran-
domly in the ground, is actually an emerging relation of the blend, which did not
exist before in any of the input spaces. In the Mine work input it is impossible to
extract modern technical equipment from the mere ground, but it is just as im-
possible to fall upon a computer with a hack when we want to find something in
the Deep Web.
The Web itself is an enormous conglomerate of diverse elements, functions,
and information channels. It requires quite some imaginative work to compress
this diffuse mass to human scale, and express its plurality within an integrated
scenario, like working in a mine. Some objects depicted in the cartoon meto-
nymically compress diffuse functions of the web, as the picture of a computer
Mária Palkó:
12 Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
screen, which can compress the world wide network of computers functioning as
a material basis of the World Wide Web. Likewise, the picture of a planet might
refer to the possibility of making astronomical observations by using Deep Web
resources. A diffuse structure is compressed into a few details. A shopping cart
for example is a compression of the complex structure of commerce, including
many agents and many events, into one simple material object. We do not need a
shopping cart on the web, yet the stylized picture of the shopping cart had be-
come the conventional icon of online transactions, just like the envelope in the
case of electronic mail and a diploma for academia. But we should keep in mind
that it is only a cultural convention of present times that we fold a mail as in
Figure 8:
Fig. 8. Mail
and a diploma as in Figure 9:
Fig. 9. Diploma
There was a time when the second icon would have sooner prompted the viewer
to interpret it as a mail.
A number of objects represented in the cartoon may be regarded as having a
special status, as especially important to, or loved by a particular (sub)culture or
defining a cultural age. Consider a car for example. Helgesen (2001) describes it
aptly as:
More than any other invention, the car is the defining cultural icon of the 20th century.
Although ostensibly just transportation, we all know it's a status symbol, social state-
ment and art. If you consider yourself an environmentally conscious urbanite, you may
drive a small, gas-efficient subcompact. If you feel young and hip and want everyone to
know it, you may drive a red sports car. If you were a child of the ‘60s, you probably
Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 13
once drove a psychedelically decorated Volkswagen van. (2001:1)
Objects (and sometimes famous persons) that are especially important, highly
representative, and as such easily recognizable as belonging to a special socio-
cultural group or age, are often named cultural icons. Being part of the socio-
cultural group or age they represent, they invoke specific sets of values, norms,
and beliefs embedded in the respective (sub)culture or cultural age. Cultural
icons enhance cognition by their density of meaning. This multiplicity of mean-
ing is achieved through metonymical compression, but in another way than cul-
tural stereotyping, where a stereotypical member of a group stands for the whole
group. To a limited extent, a cultural icon is like a synecdoche, where a salient
and usually widely popular element stands for the whole, expanded with a great
amount of symbolic meaning.
Being highly entrenched metonymical-symbolic mappings, cultural icons are
routinely exploited in cartoons. Some of the most prominent cultural icons
represented here are the robot or cyborg, and the atom, embodying both the po-
tentials, and threats of nuclear machine age; the computer and mobile phone as
the defining cultural icon for the digital generation; the guitar and LP as most
important instruments in popular culture. In the picture in Figure 10 we can see
a simplified representation of how a cultural icon can connect to a much larger
cultural reality.
Fig. 10. The functioning of a cultural icon
Cultural icons can carry strong ideological implications of value, power, and po-
litical interest too, like the American flag, the White House or the statue of Li-
berty, which is compressing the diffuse and vague concept of the American
people or the American government to human scale. All cultural icons men-
tioned till now, were projected in the blended cartoon representation unaltered,
Mária Palkó:
14 Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
as clearly identifiable objects lying in the ground. But there is one cultural icon
that actually gets fused together with one of the humanoid robots. Uncle Sam is
perhaps the most salient national personification of the United States. The icon
is mostly depicted as a serious elderly white man with white hair and a goatee,
and dressed typically with a top hat with red and white stripes, and white stars
on a blue band. What we can actually see in the cartoon are these culturally spe-
cified details fused together with salient elements from a mine worker and a ro-
bot, as seen in Figure 11.
Fig. 11. Fusing a cultural icon with an element in the blend
Parts of the representation cannot be categorized as either cultural stereotypes
or cultural icons, although they compress and prompt rich culture-specific back-
ground information. In fact they have no metonymic relation with the socio-
cultural reality they represent. The freemasonic symbol of the square and the
compass and the caduceus symbol of the medical science are not metonymically
contiguous with freemasonry and medicine. They are results of symbolic map-
pings. They are symbolic, because the conceptual connections between the visu-
al composition and the general concept it represents are determined by an arbi-
trary convention of the (sub)cultural community.
Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 15
Fig. 12. Mapping a cultural symbol
The fact, that such symbols are culture-specific, is well exemplified by the
caduceus (Figure 13)
Fig. 13. Caduceus
which is used as a symbol for medicine especially in North America through
confusion with another medical symbol, the rod of Asclepius (Figure 14),
Mária Palkó:
16 Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
Fig. 14. Asclepius
which has only a single snake and no wings. Symbols just like cultural stereo-
types and cultural icons are widely recognized and compress meanings beyond
the objects they illustrate.
Although the cartoon representation compresses a great amount of socio-
cultural information into one tightly integrated form, there is an allusion to it be-
ing only a portion of the whole. The open mine drift on the bottom of the page,
seemingly cut off by the picture frame, is an appeal to imagine as the mine con-
tinues with additional drifts and more robots working in them. Imagine the tra-
vel search robot for example working in another drift not visible in the cartoon.
We could imagine him wearing a bahama shirt, shorts, sunglasses and a straw
hat, carrying his travel bag in one hand and holding a boarding card in another,
while he is searching for airplanes, palm trees, hammocks, and cocktails. We can
simulate this mentally during the process of elaboration (Fauconnier and Turner
2003: 44), an expanded form of completion according to the specific logic of the
blend. As we have seen, the logic of this visual blend requires the abstract con-
cept of the specialty area of a search robot to be projected from the Deep Web
search space: for example travel search, legal search, business intelligence
search and so on. This abstract concept is then concretized and completed, draw-
ing on our socio-cultural background knowledge with concretely depictable
elements, which are unmistakably connected to the respective concept. Such
highly identifiable elements can be cultural stereotypes, cultural icons or cultural
symbols.
5. Concluding remarks
In this paper, I have studied some aspects of culturally salient visual elements,
which I have identified as cultural stereotypes, cultural icons, and cultural sym-
bols. The main aim of the paper was to stress the role of such culturally deter-
Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 17
mined and entrenched visual elements in producing and interpreting conceptual
blends. “Mining the ‘Deep Web’ With Sharper Shovels,” the editorial cartoon
chosen for analysis, exemplified some remarkable characteristics of conceptual
blending. In its formal economy it was able to articulate the complexity of the
World Wide Web and the diversity of its public in a tightly integrated scenario.
Through the use of a number of cultural stereotypes, cultural icons, and cultural
symbols, it displayed different conceptual strategies to provide highly recogniz-
able visual compressions of diffuse and abstract values, norms and assumptions
of some cultural groups and our contemporary age.
References
Coulson, Seana, Todd Oakley (2003). Metonymy and conceptual blending. Panther, Klaus-
Uwe, Linda L. Thornburg, eds. (2003). Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing (Pragma-
tics and Beyond. New Series 113). Amsterdam - Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 51-79.
http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~coulson/metonymy-new.htm.
Coulson, Seana (2005). Extemporaneous blending: Conceptual integration in humorous dis-
course from talk radio. Style 39.2: 107-122. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_
m2342/is_2_39/ ai_n16485883.
Fauconnier, Gilles, MarkTurner (1994). Conceptual Projection and Middle Spaces. Technical
Report 9401. http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/research/files/technical/9401.pdf.
Fauconnier, Gilles, MarkTurner (1999). Metonymy and conceptual integration. Panther,
Klaus-Uwe, Günter Radden, eds. Metonymy in Language and Thought. (Human Cogni-
tive Processing 4). Amsterdam - Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 77-90.
Fauconnier, Gilles, MarkTurner (2003). The Way We Think. New York: Basic Books.
Goossens, Louis (1995). Metaphtonymy: The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in figu-
rative expressions for linguistic action. Goossens, Louis, Paul Pauwels, Brygida
Rudzka-Ostyn, Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, Johan Vanparys, eds. By Word of
Mouth. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Linguistic Action in a Cognitive Perspective. (Prag-
matics & Beyond. New Series 33). Amsterdam - Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 159-
174.
Goossens, Louis (1995). By Word of Mouth: Metaphor, Metonymy, and Linguistic Action in a
Cognitive Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Helgesen, Rebecca (2001) Driving change: Motor vehicle impacts on the environment. Min-
nesota Environment 1.3: 2-3. http://www.pca.state.mn.us/publications/mnenvironment/
spring2001/mnenv-spring2001.pdf.
Kövecses, Z. (2006). Language, Mind and Culture. Oxford – New York: Oxford University
Press.
Turner, Mark, Gilles Fauconnier (2002). Metaphor, metonymy, and binding. Dirven René,
Ralf Pörings, eds. Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. A Cognitive
Perspective. (Topics in English Linguistics 30). Berlin - New York: Mouton de Gruyter,
469-487.
Mária Palkó:
18 Strategies for compression of socio-cultural reality
Author’s address:
Aschaffenburger Str. 55.
63877 Sailauf
Germany
[email protected] STRATEGIJE ZA KOMPRIMIRANJE DRUŠTVENO-KULTURNE STVARNOSTI
U METAFORIKOM VIZUALNOM BLENDU
Prilog istražuje neke aspekte kulturno istaknutih i uvriježenih vizualnih elemenata koje se
može identificirati kao kulturne stereotipe, kulturne ikone i kulturne simbole. Pomou mreže
mentalnih prostora unutar teorije konceptualne integracije Fauconniera i Turnera analizira se
karikatura iz jednog uvodnika kako bi se pokazala važnost takvih vizualnih elemenata u proi-
zvoenju i razumijevanju konceptualnih blendova. Kulturni stereotipi, kulturne ikone i kul-
turni simboli opisuju se kao posebne strategije za komprimiranje velike i difuzne društveno-
kulturne stvarnosti.
Kljune rijei: teorija konceptualne integracije; vizualni blend; komprimiranje; kulturni ste-
reotip; kulturna ikona; kulturni simbol.
Jezikoslovlje
10.1 (2009): 1-19 19
Appendix
