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- Convenors:
-
Corentin Chanet
(ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles))
David Eubelen (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Jordi Vallverdu (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Stream:
- Creativity
- Location:
- Examination Schools Room 9
- Start time:
- 19 September, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel explores perceptual and conceptual blending processes as the emergence and communication of meaning on various levels (cognitive, cultural, linguistic, etc.) and their crucial role in the comprehension of human imagination.
Long Abstract:
Over the last three decades there has been a significant shift operating from representational to "enactive" and "embodied" perspectives on cognition and perception, both in anthropology and cognitive sciences (Csordas 1990, Dreyfus 2009, Ingold 2000).
However when dealing with imagination and creativity (Turner and Fauconnier 1999), it seems impossible not to consider conceptual representation and "mental imagery", or equally inconceivable to study these issues without referring to material and bodily entanglements. Consequently, rather than fueling the conceptual divide between environmental features and internal representations, we argue that meaning emergence and communication continuously relies on blending processes within and across mind and environment. Metaphors (Oakley 1999) and visual blending (Hutchins 2005) entail the coexistence of perceived and imagined features that are essential for achieving cognitive tasks and communicating cultural experiences (Lemonier 2012). At the crossroad of linguistics, cognitive sciences and anthropology, the notion of blending has thus opened up a vast and promising field of research (Turner 2001, Liu and Stasko 2010).
Several issues are worth investigating. What are the material, social and cognitive conditions for blending processes to occur? How do blended cognition and perception relate to cultural imaginaries and shared narratives? To what extent can creative or daily practices rely on the superimposition of anticipatory "images"? How is blending involved in learning environments? In this panel, we call upon papers dealing with these issues through a multidisciplinary approach, as well as papers providing micro-level ethnographic accounts of blending processes and artistic, religious or mundane occurrences of human imagination.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Numbers are concepts influenced by material forms used to represent and manipulate them. The inclusion of multiple forms is the mechanism of numerical elaboration. Further, variety in forms explains the synchronic and diachronic variability exists between and within cultural number systems.
Paper long abstract:
Numbers are concepts whose content, structure, and organization are influenced by the material forms used to represent and manipulate them. Indeed, as argued here, it is the inclusion of multiple forms (distributed objects, fingers, single- and two-dimensional forms like pebbles and abaci, and written notations) that is the mechanism of numerical elaboration. Further, variety in employed forms explains at least part of the synchronic and diachronic variability that exists between and within cultural number systems. Material forms also impart characteristics like linearity that may persist in the form of knowledge and behaviors, ultimately yielding numerical concepts that are irreducible to and functionally independent of any particular form. The potential inclusion of materiality in contemporary research in numerical cognition is advocated, both for its explanatory power, as well as its influence on psychological, behavioral, and linguistic aspects of numerical cognition.
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates the conceptualisation process of endometriosis pain by drawing on conceptual blending theory. The article poses that pain narratives that rely on intertextual and interdiscursive references can be seen as evidence of the conceptual integration process.
Paper long abstract:
This work explores narratives of pain experienced by women who suffer from the debilitating gynecological disease of endometriosis.
Endometriosis affects 1 in 10 women yet its worldwide average diagnosis length is 7.5 years and it is mainly diagnosed when exploring infertility rather than complaints about incapacitating pain and other associated manifestations. As its symptoms occur during menstrual cycles, when some degree of pain is expected, it is not infrequent to find health-care practitioners that dismiss and normalize pain as part of the female condition by reference to low pain threshold (Bullo, 2018). Findings of the latter study also suggest that dismissal or normalisation leading to diagnosis delay may also happen as a result of miscommunication of symptoms, in particular, the way in which pain is conceptualised and explained during early consultations.
Drawing on empirical data collected through interviews and surveys investigating narratives of endometriosis pain experiences, I investigate how women's accounts of pain rely on intertextual and interdiscursive references that work as textual evidence of conceptual blending integration (Fauconnier and Turner, 2002). The study concludes that intertextuality and interdiscursivity as linguistic manifestations of conceptual blending (Bullo, 2017) may play a key role in conceptualisation and sense making of endometriosis pain experiences and argues that these findings may inform the construction of a toolbox to aid pain description during medical consultations.
The findings of the study have implications for health communication practices about the condition and will provide the basis for broader enquiries on making sense of pain.
Paper short abstract:
The paper extends my theory of "multi-level grounding", which constrains the process of emergence of meaning based on conceptual blending, to three new multimodal phenomena relating language, music and visual imagery: "embodied synchronization", "fictive interaction", and "phatic communication".
Paper long abstract:
My fledgling theory of "multi-level grounding" views semiosis resulting from conceptual blending as neither indeterministic, stemming from endless cycles of cross-space mappings, nor rooted in firm ontologies, such as information inherent to material anchors. Rather, the meaningful potential of multimodal content is simultaneously "attracted" by a hierarchy of "grounding boxes", levels of constraint ranging from embodied to social factors, providing contextual motivation for the generation of meaning, yet allowing astounding creativity in individual semantic interpretations. Layers identified so far, e.g. from actual descriptions of a Wagner piece in an experiment, are physiological ("tense music"), image schematic ("forces clashing"), connotational ("dramatic sentiments"), conceptual ("a battle at sea"), elaborated cultural ("sounds like gods coming down from Olympus") and individual ("reminds me of elementary school"). I here extend the system to three new phenomena of potential interest to anthropologists, integrating language, music and visual cognition. The first, "embodied synchronization" discusses emergent effects of rhythmic alignment, as in the compositional technique of "Mickey-Mousing", where the music mimics the movement of characters on the screen to produce meaningful events. The second, "fictive interaction" explores how music and visual imagery produce semiosis in instances in which a character "replicates" on the screen and starts interacting with the doppelganger ("identity projection" in CBT, e.g. Spock meeting Spock in Star Trek [2009]). The third explores musico-visual analogues of linguistic "phatic communication", social bonding without overt referential content, as in the invocation of the force theme in Star Wars whenever the characters jointly embrace "the light side".