The Literary Mind.pdf

MANY SPACES 87
manipulating the input space in which it resides? George Lakoff and I have given
one argument for the existence of generic spaces, as follows.
When we read a proverb in a book of proverbs, and so have no reason to
connect the meaning of the proverb to any specific target, we arrive at a generic
reading. For example, "Look before you leap," found in a book of proverbs (or in
a fortune cookie), will be interpreted generically. Similarly, "When the cat's away,
the mice will play" presents a source story of mice who behave in a restricted
fashion when the cat is around but who behave with fewer restrictions when the
cat is gone. The generic-level information in this story can be projected to a
generic space with an abstract story: One agent or group of agents constrains
another agent or group of agents, and when the governing agent is inattentive,
the otherwise constrained agent or agents behave more freely. We can reach this
generic interpretation even if we have no specific target onto which we wish to
project it. So the generic space has a conceptual existence.
Lakoff and I have called this kind of projection from a source story to a
generic story GENERIC IS SPECIFIC: generic information, often image-schematic,
is projected from a specific space to give structure to a generic space. Of course,
this generic space "applies" to the specific space from which it came. Once the
generic space is established, we may project it onto a range of specific target spaces.
The generic space constructed out of "When the cat's away, the mice will play"
can be projected onto stories of the office, the classroom, infidelity, congressional
oversight committees, computer antivirus utilities, and so on, over an unlimited
range.
Blends can be constructed if two stories can be construed as sharing abstract
structure. The abstract structure they share is contained in the generic space that
connects them. Consider, for example, the riddle of the Buddhist monk. Its
generic space has a single journeyer taking a single journey from dawn to sunset,
over a single distance along a single path. The generic space does not specify the
direction of the journey (up or down), the date of the journey, or the internal
form of the journey (starting and stopping, moving slower or faster). This degree
of inspecificity allows the generic structure to be projected equally well onto the
space of the ascent on the first day, the space of the descent on the second day,
and the blended space where both journeys occur on an unspecified day. The
riddle of the Buddhist monk involves two input spaces, a generic space, and a
blended space.
It often takes work to find a generic space that fits two input spaces; there
are often alternative generic spaces that might connect two input spaces. But in
some cases, a generic space has been constructed repeatedly between two spaces.
It has come to structure the two input spaces and to establish what seem to be
fixed counterparts. The generic space has become fully available from each of
the input spaces. In that case, the generic space becomes invisible to us. If the