Semiotic Classification of "Imaginary Subjects" in Children's Stories: From the Perspective of Conceptual Blending Theory

This is an academic article or essay explaining theories of conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending in cognitive linguistics. It outlines George Lakoff's view of conceptual metaphors as mappings between two domains, then describes how Fauconnier and Turner replaced this two-domain model with a network model of conceptual blending. Their model includes input spaces, mappings between them, a generic space, and a blended space, the latter emerging from the mental integration of two or more input spaces. The generic space mediates the relationship between the input spaces and the blend.