4.1 Word and utterance

Vygotsky’s work constitutes one of the early approaches to analyzing the interplay between language and the workings of the mind in verbal interaction. However, Vygotsky focuses his reflections on the word, and not, for example, on the utterance, or the drives of the interlocutors as the central units of constructing and carrying meaning and thus for analyzing mental functions (cf. Wertsch 1985: 132-157, 194-208). Vygotsky assumes that, “Consciousness is reflected in the word as the sun in a drop of water. The word relates to consciousness as a living cell relates to a whole organism, as an atom relates to the universe. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness” (Vygotsky 1986: 256). But Vygotsky does not conceptualize the word as the carrier of a unit of stable sense; on the contrary, he clearly accentuates the fuzziness of the meaning of a word, depending on the social usage of that word in a particular conversation: “A word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears; in different contexts, it changes its sense. Meaning remains stable throughout the changes of sense. The dictionary meaning of a word is no more than a stone in the edifice of sense, no more than a potentiality that finds diversified realization in speech” (Vygotsky 1986: 245). The word has a relatively stable socially-derived meaning which can be defined in dictionaries and reference works. However, in actual language use the word has sense for the subject, which can be influenced by subjective connotations, memories, emotions, and desires. In these deliberations, Vygotsky does not take into consideration the fact that the word alone is only a part of the complex semiotic mediation of mental functioning; it is not itself a unit of mental functioning. Therefore, Vygotsky’s focus on the word as a unit of analysis prevented him from recognizing that sense is also “governed by the semiotic property of voices and their interanimation” (Wertsch 1985: 229).

By contrast, Wittgenstein emphasizes the notion that words in isolation carry no definite meaning; words, and hence meaning, are dependent on the way they are used within the linguistic system, or the language game.⁴⁶ According to Wittgenstein, words acquire their meaning in the same way that figures do in a game of chess (cf. Wittgenstein 1953: § 31). Without knowing the rules of the game, chess figures are meaningless. Knowing the rules, however, the players can even replace certain figures (which might have gone missing) with other objects, such as matches or corks, as long as all players agree on their symbolic value. Each piece in the chess set acquires its meaning only from the game as a whole. Wittgenstein sees the isolated word in the same position: without the rules of the game of language, it is meaningless. “The question ‘What is a word really?’ is analogous to ‘What is a piece in chess?”’ (Wittgenstein 1953: § 108). Words, then, gain their particular meaning only by their use within a particular language game. Consequently, meaning is generated through verbal interchange and is only given to words in a specific context; universally, there exists no definite or fixed meaning of a word as an object of mind. According to Wittgenstein, there cannot be a fixed or stable meaning of the word, or any other sign, independent of its context of use. There are always multiple construals of word meaning possible in any given situation, and the subject construes meaning for a given specific spatiotemporal situation within the broader framework of the language game. The word, the syntax, the language, the discourse, the discursive positionings of the self and the other interactants, his or her subjective intentions, goals, and expectations, the discursive history of interlocutors, their subjective and joint experiences are all factors influencing the language game.⁴⁷

This means that language, conceptualization, categorization and their actual usage are engaged in continuous interplay and interanimation; the meaning of a word is subtly altered in each new context of usage, and new words may be coined at any time. For example, in English the neologism to underwhelm was coined as the semantic opposite of to overwhelm, as in I was underwhelmed by his performance. However, the process of creating an antonym of the corresponding term did not take place in other languages; for instance, there exists in German the verb überwältigen (‘to overwhelm’) but no concept (yet?) of unterwältigen (‘to underwhelm’). More complex neologisms have been introduced by literary and poetic authors, for instance, by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake, by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, or by Arno Schmidt in Zettels Traum and Raoul Hausmann in Hyle, to mention but a few novelists writing in English or German. However, these neologisms only have validity within the specific language game of that particular literary work; they have not found their way into ordinary everyday language. Thus, linguistic items only have meaning allocated to them within the rules and practices of the specific language game; this kind of meaning cannot be transferred to another language game because it follows different rules.

These examples clearly show that the lexical item of the word alone is simply too arbitrary and variable a notion to be meaningfully imposed on concepts. Concepts and words do not exist in isolation but are produced and organized within conceptual and linguistic structures. Concepts can only make sense, not so much in the expression of the single atomistic word, but in distinction to other concepts and signs, in the context of the linguistic expression and in relation to a larger-scaled network of conceptual information. Words and morphemes as signs can be applied in a multitude of ways but they do not have the potential to dictate per se the right way to use them. They can merely point to meanings or concepts but they do not contain them. Therefore, Vygotsky’s focus on the word as the unit of analysis in his reflections on the relationship between speaking and thinking, or language and thought, is obviously too reductive. Clearly, a broader unit of analysis is required in order to provide a more viable account of the relation between language and concepts in the context of the social production of meaning.

Similar to Wittgenstein, but coming from a literary angle, the Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin focuses on analyzing speech units larger than the word for the construction of meaning. While Vygotsky stresses the importance of speech, and particularly the word, for human cognitive growth, his sociocultural theory does not take into consideration the characteristics of speech as a combination of words embedded in a given interactive context. Thus, Vygotsky’s approach lacks important elements in the production and construction of meaning that go beyond the unit of the word. As Wertsch (1991) suggests, this gap is filled by the work of Vygotsky’s contemporary, Mikhail Bakhtin, who emphasizes the importance of the larger and more complex linguistic notion of the utterance as a comprehensive unit for communication and for the construction of meaning. A major function of language is its intersubjective use for the purpose of communication. Therefore, it is not only a semiotic system but is fraught with subjective intentions, memories, feelings, etc. in its intersubjective use. The study of isolated words, therefore, would be a reductive exercise because, according to Bakhtin: “The study of a word as such, ignoring the impulse that reaches out beyond it, is just as senseless as to study psychological experience outside the context of that real life toward which it is directed and by which it is determined” (Bakhtin 1981: 292).

A word can only be used by a speaker in a meaningful manner in an utterance constructed to convey intended meaning to others. However, the word is hardly ever used as a single item but is always contextualized by speech and by the social-subjective setting of interaction in synchronic and diachronic dimensions:

In this statement, Bakhtin emphasizes the “elastic environment” of words used by speakers in utterances relating to particular topics; it is elastic because one could have chosen other words to express something similar, albeit with slight differences in meaning. He also stresses the living interaction in which the word is used by a speaker. Clearly, the speaker selects the words in utterances in order to construct particular meaning for specific purposes. The selection process is influenced by many factors, for example, the genre in which it is set, the level of knowledge and competence of the speaker with regard to the field of words relating to the topic in question, and the knowledge of the history of the discourse in terms of what has been said and left unsaid (Bakhtin’s notion of “alien words”). Bakhtin attaches particular significance to the voices of others in a historical dimension which have the power to guide the mind of the interlocutors with regard to what is being spoken about. If this diachronic link to the words spoken by others about the topic were not there, it would be much more difficult for the interlocutors to negotiate for the meaning of the utterance because they would neither be familiar with the potential thematic value judgments inherent in the utterances nor with the potentially divergent voices.

Bakhtin considers the notion of utterance – in contrast to more abstract concepts such as the word or the sentence which have been emphasized by Vygotsky and Saussure – to be “a real unit of speech communication” (Bakhtin 1986: 67; emphasis in the original), reflecting a real speech situation and a real speech activity, set in a specific socio-pragmatic context. This definition stands in explicit contrast to Saussure’s and Chomsky’s fictional speech situation of ideal speakers and listeners, and implies that not only are the participants in this speech-activity conceptualized as real but the utterance has the “quality of being directed or addressed to someone,” or “addressivity” (Bakhtin 1986: 99). “The word in living conversation is directly, blatantly, oriented toward a future answer-word: it provokes an answer, anticipates it and structures itself in the answer’s direction” (Bakhtin 1981: 280; emphasis added).

Thus, the word in conversation is populated by subjective sense in the way it is actually used in the present, but forward-looking by provoking and structuring the answer of the other interloctutor(s). Bakhtin’s notion of utterance involves speaker, listener, and a third party, namely “the superaddressee (...), whose absolutely just responsive understanding is presumed” (Bakhtin 1986: 126). Like God or absolute truth, the hypothetical superaddressee fully understands the subjective intention and meaning of the utterance. Hence, the superaddressee comes close to the ideal speaker-listener, but in contrast to Saussure’s and Chomsky’s constructs, he or she is only implied in Bakhtin’s model. In producing utterances, the superaddressee is a necessary fictitious element because identical one-to-one understanding is impossible to achieve in interaction, yet the speaker typically assumes that his or her utterance will be fully received in the way he or she intended. In comparison to Vygotsky and Saussure, Bakhtin’s notion of utterance is extended in two important dimensions: the characteristics of addressivity and of responsiveness. Therefore, Bakhtin goes beyond Vygotsky’s focus on the word, and he also extends Saussure’s notion of parole which Saussure considered to be an individualistic verbal performance without social dimensions.⁴⁸ For Bakhtin, by contrast, “the structure of the utterance is a purely sociological (social) structure” (Bakhtin and Volosinov 1973: 98).

According to Bakhtin, the utterance carries with it many voices in social and historical dimensions: “The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue” (Bakhtin 1981: 276). Since utterances carry with them the voices and meanings of others, they are fundamentally a product of the living interaction of social forces, including in a historical dimension. Heteroglossia (raznorecie, literally ‘multi-speechedness’) and polyphony (‘many-voicedness’) are the foundational conditions “governing the operation of meaning in any utterance” (Holquist 1981: 428).⁴⁹ Heteroglossia finds its expression in sequences of concrete utterances, understood not only as part of interaction on a synchronic level, but containing elements of voices of others in a diachronic dimension: “The authentic environment of an utterance in which it lives and takes shape, is dialogized heteroglossia, anonymous and social as language, but simultaneously concrete, filled with specific content and accented as an individual utterance” (Bakhtin 1981: 272). It is the utterance that has the authority over the speaker who just accentuates some of the many diachronic voices inherent in language and directs it towards the utterances of others in dialogue.

The concept of heteroglossia refers to a situation where “all utterances are heteroglot in that they are a function of a matrix of forces practically impossible to recoup, and therefore impossible to resolve” (Holquist 1981: 428). Heteroglossia is located at the intersection of centripetal and centrifugal forces in a language. Whereas centripetal forces tend to pull language towards the unitary center provided by the notion of a national language, centrifugal forces pull towards the various sub-languages (e.g., dialects, sociolects) which actually constitute the apparent but false unity of a national language. Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia alludes to the multiplicity of actual languages which are at any time spoken by the speakers of any language, for example, the “languages of social groups and classes, of professional groups, of generations, the different languages for different occasions that speakers adopt even within these broader distinctions” (Dentith 1995: 35). At one extreme, heteroglossia can render interaction mutually unintelligible, while at the other end it can allude to popular slogans, or ways of speaking. This implies that when individuals are engaged in interaction, they cannot be seen as carriers of autonomous subjective voices but as agents whose utterances and constructs of self, Other, and others, carry the voices and intentions of others, but are adopted by the subject for particular communicative purposes.

Bakhtin (1986) explains the notion of heteroglossia in interactions by pointing out that,

These different qualities of language become engaged on many levels in interaction; whereas it is already difficult to pin down the subjective voice in the individual utterances (i.e., analyzing the voices of others inherent in the subjective voice), it is impossible to reduce the involvement in interaction strictly to the subjective voices of the interlocutors.

The relevance of Bakhtin’s notion of utterance lies in stressing the use of linguistic symbols as a social act. Language is used in a perspective fashion in intersubjective interaction involving two or more interlocutors. Hence, the utterance is not the property of the speaker alone: it carries with it fragments from a diverse sociocultural heritage as well as significance derived from its actual context and content of usage since “speech can exist in reality only in the form of concrete utterances of individual speaking people” (Bakhtin 1986: 71); the utterance is embedded and fraught with subjective sense. Bakhtin explains the difference between a purely linguistic approach towards the utterance and his more inclusive social approach: “The linguistic significance of a given utterance is understood against the background of language, while its actual meaning is understood against the background of other concrete utterances on the same theme, a background made up of contradictory opinions, points of view and value judgments” (Bakhtin 1981: 280).

Thus, the utterance is interanimated and contextualized on several levels, namely by the textual placement (utterances that precede and follow), by the specific communicative objectives of the speakers (the force of the utterance), the motivations and expectations of the interlocutors, their method of formulating speech (voice, pitch, intonation, etc.), and the pragmatic conditions in which the utterances are produced (including the utterances themselves which produce elements of the context during the process of interaction). All of these contextualizing elements have a contributing influence on the co-construction of meaning by the interlocutors, which occurs jointly but at the same time subjectively; these contextualizing elements are not static and monolithic, but highly dynamic and flexible. For L2 learners it is very difficult to gain an understanding of other voices inherent in the L2 utterance because they are not familiar with the sociocultural traditions and developments which inform these other voices. However, for an appropriate construction of the Other, this knowledge and the ability to identify at least the most relevant of these voices is indispensable.

4.2 Speech genre

Intersubjective communication does not take place in a vacuum; the social context often has a structuring influence on interaction. Since the language used in interaction also reflects the genre in which it is set, one can differentiate between speech genre (e.g., style, content, composition, register, etc.) and genre in the broader sociocultural setting (e.g., discourse, routinized habits, patterns of doing things, etc.). The use of language “can in no way be regarded as a completely free combination of forms of language, as is supposed, for example, by Saussure” (Bakhtin 1986: 81; emphasis in the original), but it is structured along certain speech genres. Speech situations are not always completely novel since some of the contextualizing factors in particular genres of communication, such as, for instance, the workplace, the tennis club, the supermarket, or the military, have developed into relatively standardized types of utterances. These communication-contexts influence the “thematic content, style, and compositional structure [which] are inseparably linked to the whole of the utterance and are equally determined by the specific nature of the particular sphere of communication. Each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of utterances. These we may call speech genres” (Bakhtin 1986: 60; emphasis in the original).

The habitualized form of language used in certain contexts, or the speech genre, becomes recognizable and predictable for the interactants; it provides the structure and pattern that glue the utterances together in a coherent and recognizable manner. The fact that every utterance is tied to a particular speech genre facilitates a smooth intersubjective understanding of the potentially heterogeneous utterance:

Thus, speech genres have a fundamentally stabilizing effect on the communicative use of language in generic speech situations. A speech genre, therefore, is a certain communicative style and composition, oriented to the production and reception of a particular kind of utterance or text within particular historically-derived socio-communicative or discursive conventions. When an utterance is assimilated into a specific speech genre, the process by which it is produced and interpreted is mediated through its intertextual relationship with prior texts or utterances. When using a generic linguistic framing device such as the phrases Once upon a time or Now I raise my glass, a respective set of expectations is triggered concerning the unfolding of the subsequent discourse which, for the two examples given, relates to a fairy tale and to the act of toasting someone (or something) in celebration. These expectations constitute a framework for endowing discourse with textual properties such as internal cohesion, coherence, and boundedness. Speech genres are an integral part of social practices; social practices both reflect and help to produce the macro-level complexes of language, knowledge, and power (referred to by Foucault as discourses; cf. Section 4.5), which organize how people act, think, and understand.

Since every utterance is “shaped and developed within a certain generic form” (Bakhtin 1986: 78), the meaning of utterances and words is not fundamentally under the control of the speaker, because he or she has to adhere to the requirements of the genre. The speaker needs competent others to co-construct meaning in a reciprocal process of interanimation. The framework for this kind of co-construction of meaning is provided by the genre which indexes prior situational contexts (for instance, settings, scenarios, objectives, or participant roles); these in turn generate a certain set of expectations for the unfolding of the speech event (or text). Thus, people learn to cast their speech in generic forms which, apart from the content, makes the genre, the approximate length of the speech and its composition predictable for others (cf. Bakhtin 1986: 79). Conversational units are always contextualized in speech genres, on that basis facilitating a smooth interactional process between interlocutors, if they are familiar with the speech genre (which normally is the case if interactants share the same language and tacit cultural knowledge).

However, speech genres only operate as a set of conventional guidelines for the production and reception of discourse; they are informative but not necessarily determinative for the co-construction of meaning in speech or text, because emergent circumstances and agendas of the immediate contextualization process of the speech event or of the reception of written text inevitably enter the discursive process. Thus, meaning is by no means fixed by a particular speech genre; it is subject to continuous re-negotiation, albeit in the framework of structured configurations of conventional thematic knowledge. This is why Bakhtin (1986: 60) uses the expression “relatively stable” for characterizing speech genres; there are generic conventions for interaction and construction in particular situations, but these are at the same time open to negotiation on a micro-level (between interactants), and to change on a macro-level (e.g., in the speech community). The relativity of stability of speech genres makes them much more difficult to recognize, predict, and use for L2 learners because of the practical differences in speech genres, based on their sociocultural development. While some speech genres may be very similar across cultures, for example, the professional speech of bankers, car mechanics, or teachers, others can be highly specific to a culture, such as the speech genres around juju (‘black magic’) in West Africa, or of dog parlors in Western countries.

4.3 Genre

The notion of genre can be expanded from the narrower linguistic understanding of speech genre to larger socio-interactional formations such as discourses and genres of activities. Genre in this wider sense has developed historically in a specific sociocultural and linguistic context by establishing certain patterns of organizing speech, text, and activity. These are linked to particular types of situational restraints which have an influence on shaping a particular pattern of interaction. For example, Jauss (1982: 80, cited in Frow 2005: 70) emphasizes the socio-historical dimension of literary genres which he understands to be “groups or historical families. As such, they cannot be deduced or defined, but only historically determined, delimited, and described.”

While genre is shaped by the sociocultural, situational, and linguistic context in a diachronic dimension, it has a shaping and structuring influence on linguistic and social actions, and on “meaning and value at the level of text for certain strategic ends; it produces effects of truth and authority that are specific to it, and projects a ‘world’ that is generically specific” (Frow 2005: 73). Therefore, genres contribute to imposing a structure on an otherwise chaotic social world; they facilitate, and at the same time restrain, the production and interpretation of meaning for people in interaction. It is important to note, however, that genres are by no means universal. Whereas some genres transcend the boundaries of cultures, especially in the domains of economics, law, and finance, others are highly dependent on the cultural context in which they were created. For instance, the literary genre of Haiku only exists in the Japanese culture; although many translations of Haiku have been produced, it cannot be translated appropriately into Western languages and cultures, according to Roland Barthes (1981), since the oneness of word and sense would go amiss in the process of reception. Barthes maintains that the Western tendency of ascribing meaning to everything goes contrary to the function of Haiku, which is the momentary stimulation of a spark of truth (cf. Barthes 1981: 65; Krusche 1984).

Genres help people to structure not only their verbal behavior in the immediate communicative acts, but also, and more importantly, their activities and knowledge of the social world. Because of this structuring function, genres demand certain behavioral and speech requirements by the interactants. Therefore, genres have to be acquired contextually in the process of socialization in which children learn about the socially sanctioned organization of knowledge and the inherent differences; they learn in which genres to use specific registers and how to interact in particular ways with particular people in particular circumstances. This tacit knowledge of genres is to a large extent acquired in primary socialization. It is expanded and made partially explicit in secondary education in that children learn at school “about the socially sanctioned division of knowledge and the generic differences and the differences of value accompanying it” (Frow 2005: 140). In learning about literature at school, for example, pupils are taught the differences between drama, novel, and poem as specific organizations of texts; subsequently, children can make elaborate forms of meta-commentary on these genres. An integral part of schooling is the sitting of tests and examinations. Through this process, children also learn about genres, such as essay writing, classroom discussions, multiple choice tests, etc. Thus, formal schooling reinforces and expands their knowledge of genres by purposely facilitating certain ways of working, (inter-) acting, and thinking which are socially sanctioned. Schooling then, streamlines the knowledge of genre as a way of ensuring the smooth use of genre by individuals in adulthood, and it also contributes to the social maintenance of specific genres in culture.

When speech is used in genres, it frequently results in using register, since register is associated with particular social practices and with the people who engage in them. The use of register in such situations conveys to members of the speech community that an identifiable social practice is linked to this specific occasion of language use; it also signals the degree of sociolinguistic competence of the speaker, for example, in terms of familiarity with a professional genre, such as banking. However, not all members of a language community have equal access to registers during socialization and in later life. Thus, competence in register and genre, understood as the linkage of linguistic repertoires and social practices, can result in the creation and maintenance of social boundaries within society, since language users are separated into distinct groups through differential access to particular registers and to the social practices they mediate, including the ascription of social value.

The attention to larger units of contexts for speech production has the potential to question the normally assumed cross-contextual and cross-cultural validity of speech acts, such as thanking, promising, or praising. It also extends to the interpretation and construction of the immediate context of interaction which is usually performed on the basis of sociocultural patterns, such as genre. Context in this sense is not a fixed set of variables, but both context and interaction are characterized by “a mutually reflexive relationship to each other, with talk, and the interpretative work it generates, shaping context as much as context shapes thought” (Goodwin and Duranti 1992: 31). Context in this broad sense relies heavily on a specific form of language with its inherent conceptualizations, connotations, and inferences and relies on a specific sociocultural basis with its genres, schemata, discourses, patterns of interpretation, and construction. In a narrower sense, interactional context is, of course, specific to the immediate situations, motivations, intentions, and competences of the interactants, and to the psychological and communicative interplay between the communicants. In this complex interplay, previous discourse plays a central role, as Briggs and Bauman point out, “genre is quintessentially intertextual. When discourse is linked to a particular genre, the process by which it is produced and received is mediated through its relationship with prior discourse. Unlike most examples of reported speech, however, the link is not made to isolated utterances, but to generalised or abstracted models of discourse and reception” (Briggs and Bauman 1992: 147, cited in Frow 2005: 48). People who have known each other for a long time and over many interactions, for example, can effortlessly frame previously made experiences or co-constructed meaning as part of their interaction. In professional discourse, this kind of discursive link is established by the requirements of the profession, for instance, academic, medical, or trade (and its specializations). Thus, genre is much more than a mere stylistic device applied to texts such as drama, novel, or poem:

Thus, genres help to structure subjective and collective constructs of self, Other, and others. However, they are not prescriptive in the sense of laying out rules of (interactive) behavior; they only offer principles of construction and activity which help people to understand and position themselves in the social world. Genres are frequently used in everyday life to an extent that they become habitualized, and individuals are no longer aware when, how, and what kind of genre they are using:

The competence to use genre as a specific pattern of organization for all kinds of semiotic materials, and awareness of its possibilities and constraints, are fundamental forms of sociocultural knowledge mediated in socialization; without tacit and automated knowledge and use of genres, one cannot acquire the status of a full member of a speech community. Thus, knowledge of genres and the ability to move within genres is also relevant for L2 learners. Without this knowledge, L2 learners would not be in a position to fully contextualize their (and others’) L2 speech and activities in social settings. However, genres are not universally the same across cultures and languages. Hence, the encounter of a person from another cultural and speech community can be structurally supported and facilitated if genres are the same or similar across the two cultures. If, however, they are not comparable, this anachronistic situation may provoke reflection on the nature of genre which is typically habitualized and thus subconsciously used.

4.4 Narrative

Genres are culturally developed and socio-historically transmitted ways of organizing knowledge and experience. Usually, we use language in several genres every day of our lives, for example, in patient-doctor conversations, church services, job interviews, classroom talk, chitchat with neighbors, etc. Therefore, genres have consistent functions within established communities and carry implicit knowledge about the structure of communication and the roles of interlocutors.

Many genres rely on narratives for their structural and content-related composition. Narratives store shared knowledge and beliefs in communities and societies, and serve as an essential source for cultural learning: “[Narrative] analysis involves explaining psychological phenomena as meanings that are ordered from some theoretical perspective, like that of a storyteller, and consist of information and comments on the significance of that information” (Daiute 2004: x). Narratives can be important parts of genres and discourses as they may be necessary to explain specific problems that have a certain history. Narratives also function as a means for the reconstruction of events that “can fill the gap between two apparently unrelated events and, in the process, make sense out of nonsense” (Spence 1982: 21, cited in Daiute 2004: 112). Furthermore, telling one’s own story is an act of discursive and social positioning and of presenting oneself in ways that conform to cultural ideals, including constructing a coherent identity for oneself and for others (cf. Chapter 6). However, the narrative is not identical with the story, as the latter is a sequence of events, whereas the former recounts these events, thereby intentionally emphasizing or adding some aspects, and neglecting or omitting others in order to fit the perspective and intentions of the narrator. Narratives therefore shape the series of events, or the story of events, according to the effects the narrator wants to achieve by the narration. This is also true for major sociocultural narratives in which sociocultural norms and individual reasons are co-articulated in a normative format so as to maintain sociocultural norms. Fairy tales and folk tales, for example, serve to instill the ethics of socially acceptable behavior in children in terms of being able to appropriately engage with a world imbued with conventionality and normativity. These narratives contain prototypes of shared practice for the process of attributing reasons for actions, and the norms for regulating such actions by exemplifying positive or negative consequences for the actor.

Written narratives enable readers to participate vicariously in the thought-processes of the writer, be it directly, or through fictional figures. Narratives provide a contextualized and cohesive account of aspects of human life that are reduced in their natural complexity and inscrutability (this fact makes narratives relevant in L2 learning; cf. Section 10.2). They therefore offer ways of making sense of certain situations that the reader or listener can then use in a subjectively modified fashion as a blueprint for guidance of action and interpretation in similar situations or events in his or her own life. Narratives typically require more than just one person; therefore, they should be “defined as co-construction within a context, involving at least two people. If the time, place, or actor is shifted, the nature of the narrative is also vulnerable to change” (Gergen 2004: 279).

Since narratives foster an easier understanding of complex constructs by reducing their complexities and combining them into comprehensible stories, they assume relevance for personal constructs of selfhood and worldhood (cf. Chapter 6). They are more subjective and more open to change than stereotypes. Bruner (1996: 130-149) suggests that narratives, in the form of stories which people hear or read, provide them with “an idea about human encounters, assumptions about whether protagonists understand each other, preconceptions about normative standards” (Bruner 1996: 130). Therefore, narratives have the potential to foster easy intra- and intercultural understanding of certain aspects of life in terms of what is considered to be expected and “normal” (cf. Section 8.4). The hugely reduced complexity of reality inherent in narratives allows for the smooth presentation of particular problems in a schematic and easily understandable manner. The actions of protagonists in narratives are motivated by beliefs, desires, ambitions, values, or “intentional states” (Bruner 1996: 136), even when they are presented in anti-narrative fiction. Narratives also serve the function of dealing with conflicts and violations of norms because they show how protagonists deal with these. The function of narratives in this sense is to instill a sense of accepted normality in the reader or listener, including the norms of possible worlds. Narratives and stories lend themselves to help us live with contingencies, conflicts and violations of norms, not only because of their ability to reduce complexities, but also due to their potential to be more easily memorized than abstract theoretical analyses because the structure and the scheme of narratives with their plots and conflicts tie in with our knowledge of genre. In this way, we are getting involved in storied worlds.

Narratives can be defined as falling into genres, understood as a particular type of meta-story (for instance, bad boy woos nice girl, or power corrupts). Narratives as genres, then, are textual constructs with a particular plot and a specific structure (for example, fairy tales, detective stories, dramas, comedies). As such, they provide us with ways of making sense of the events presented in a particular narrative. On the basis of the inherent rules and devices of the narrative, based on cultural patterns, and interwoven with our own experiences, we then create our own, personal accounts of reality as our contribution to a storied world.

Narratives tend to have certain structural features such as an introduction, permission to speak, main body of narration, and a conclusion; these must be indicated in intervals to the audience so that they have an understanding of where the narrative stands at any point in the interaction because in narrative, “experience is literally talked into meaningfulness. In this sense of narrative, cultural models orchestrate the rules of conversation – such as turn taking, topic control, and speech styles – but not necessarily the content of the narrative” (Shore 1996: 58). These structural features, based on cultural models, can vary between cultures, as they are, like genres, socio-historically evolved and culturally situated. However, the superordinate genre (e.g. bad bay woos nice girl) generates a frame which can be narratively filled in many ways, be it intra- or inter-culturally.

4.5 Discourse and positioning

The term discourse is originally a linguistic concept, referring to verbal utterances of greater magnitude than the sentence. The linguistic discipline of discourse analysis, for example, is not so much concerned with utterances by speakers, but with turn-taking in the interaction between two or more speakers. Its main focus lies in reconstructing the linguistic rules and conventions that govern such discourses in their particular contexts.

However, there exists a much broader concept of discourse. It has been taken by post-structuralism and semiotics from this original linguistic realm and transferred to historical, social, political, and cultural levels in an attempt to find an analytical framework in the enterprise of fixing certain meanings and their constant reproduction and circulation within established forms of speech, forms of representation, and, in particular, institutional settings. Discourses in this broader sense are the product of social, historical, and institutional formations, and they contribute in a substantial way to the social and cultural process of making and reproducing meaning. Discourses are understood as systems of construction, containing ideas, utterances, attitudes, beliefs, and plausibility structures that systematically construct and form the subjects and the subject matter of their discursive worlds. Gee (2005) introduces a useful distinction between the two levels of discourse, linguistic and social, that will be adopted for this book:

Within certain parameters (speech genres, social conventions, institutions, narratives, genres, etc.), the use of language is characterized by complete openness. Words and sentences can be generated on the spot by people to accommodate their immediate communicative needs in a given situation in order to convey certain information or meaning in a certain intentional manner. However, there are groups of people in a given speech community that pursue joint interests, for instance, professional groups such as carpenters, musicians, bankers, or teachers. These people use language in a particular way in order to efficiently communicate their special interests. The specialized language of a group of people or community ⁵⁰ indicates membership in a Discourse. This notion comes very close to Bakhtin’s concept of speech genre (cf. Section 4.2) but puts greater emphasis on generative and restraining aspects. Gunther Kress (1985: 7) defines Discourse as follows: “A discourse provides a set of possible statements about a given area, and organizes and gives structure to the manner in which a particular topic, object, process is to be talked about. In that it provides descriptions, rules, permissions and prohibitions of social and individual actions.” This definition of Discourse as designating the conceptual territory on which knowledge is produced, is echoed by Paul du Gay (1996) who defines Discourse as referring “to a group of statements which provide a language for talking about a topic and a way of producing a particular kind of knowledge about a topic. Thus the term refers both to the production of knowledge through language and representation and the way that knowledge is institutionalized, shaping social practices and setting new practices into play” (du Gay 1996: 43).

Discourses therefore provide ways of coordinating with other people, places, times, and identities. But they also provide ways of relating to inanimate objects such as tools, technologies, clothes, etc. These two domains of animate and inanimate, however, cannot be separated in the context of Discourse since it also has the potential to combine them. For example, people can express their membership of a Discourse community by dressing in a particular manner. Therefore, Discourse is also about facilitating, situating, performing, and recognizing subject-positionings.

Discourses in the latter sense are located on a domain level, for example, in professional communities, institutional practices, or similar. However, discourses (with a lowercase “d”) can also refer to forms of interaction that are much more than only the exchange of views of two or more participants. Blommaert (2005) points out that discourse is not simply a synchronic event but that diachronic elements play a fundamental role in discourse. These are not only elements innate in language (e.g., Bakhtin’s heteroglossia) but also subjective elements brought into the discourse by the interlocutors, for instance, memories, fantasies, narratives, and desires. Blommaert refers to this phenomenon as “layered simultaneity”: “We have to conceive of discourse as subject to layered simultaneity. It occurs in a real-time, synchronic event, but it is simultaneously encapsulated in several layers of historicity, some of which are within the grasp of the participants while others remain invisible but are nevertheless present” (Blommaert 2005: 130; emphasis in the original).

Discourses function on several levels within a given speech community, namely on the subjective (cognitive and emotional) level, on a domain level (for instance, the Discourse of an academic discipline), and on the social level (for instance, what is reported and discussed in the media). On all three levels, Discourse has simultaneously normative and transforming effects; it is shaped by the participants in the D/discourse but also shapes their beliefs, values, customs, etc. Therefore D/discourse is simultaneously constitutive of social identities, social relations, and systems of knowledge and beliefs within a speech community (cf. Fairclough 1995: 131).

Obviously, there are competing D/discursive practices in society, and the individual usually participates in several D/discursive strands. Each discursive event has three basic dimensions to it: it is a spoken or written text of language, it is an instance of Discursive practice, and it is a piece of social practice (Fairclough 1995: 133). On a meso-level, Discourses provide the meanings and values which subjects use in order to position themselves; a position includes a set of rights, duties, and obligations as a social agent (cf. Harré and Gillet 1994: 35). Since Discourses are, to a certain extent, inherently contradictive and in competition with one another, the subject has to construe his or her own position in the repertoire of the D/discourses available to him or her. This means that the individual is not in complete control of his or her social and societal positioning, as it depends on the degree of availability of D/discourse (linguistic and otherwise) to him or her. Therefore, the individual is passively positioned as much as he or she is actively positioning his or her self (cf. Bamberg 2004). A position is not just a place taken up or attributed in Discourse but it involves certain rights and obligations:

This definition places the interactive activities within the moral framework triangulated by an interlocutor’s rights, duties, and obligations. These are not stable, but they can vary (unlike roles, that are often quite permanent) with regard to features of the intersubjectively constructed situations within which interactions are conducted. Hence, positions are highly context-dependent and, because the events in social reality are always open to numerous interpretations, positions taken up by a subject can be offered, accepted, claimed, defended, challenged, resisted, or rejected by the interlocutors. Positions can be taken up and left behind within the conduct of interaction; once people take up a subject position within a Discourse, they have available to them a particular, albeit limited, set of concepts, images, metaphors, ways of speaking, self-narratives, and so on that they take on as their own (cf. Burr 1998: 145). Not only do our subject positions constrain and shape what we do in a certain moment in interaction, but in their totality they are taken on as part of our psychology, providing us with our sense of identity, i.e., the self-narratives we use to talk and think about ourselves (cf. Chapter 6).⁵¹

Membership of a particular Discourse community is, among other things, demonstrated by fluency in the discourse. By using a specific form of language, usually in respect to lexical items and grammatical structure but also in terms of genre and register, the participants can be sure that much of the community-specific knowledge can be taken for granted among the interlocutors so that communication can be very efficient because much of this tacit knowledge does not have to be made explicit. This characteristic can also foster smoother crosscultural interaction once there is a minimum of shared language established, because the specificity of the knowledge domain cuts across boundaries. Such specialized Discourse for occupational communities also has the important function of creating and maintaining professional (and personal) identities (cf. Chapter 6). Mercer (2000) refers in this context to the slang used by stockbrokers on New York’s Wall Street which is highly charged with metaphors of misogynistic sex and warfare: “Stocks are commonly given female nicknames, and the acts of trading them are transformed into sexual acts: traders ride Pamela, or pull out of Becky. They touch but don’t penetrate some parts of the market. When things go wrong, then speculators get burned or blown out” (Mercer 2000: 112; emphasis in the original). Mercer interprets this as the wish of almost all stockbrokers to redefine their work along those metaphorical terms since they are almost all male. When more females become members of this occupational community, a change of these particular discursive habits will be inevitable (cf. Mercer 2000: 112).

Discourse is a genre of interaction in which the utterances of each of the interlocutors are determined by the position they occupy in a certain social formation. Meanings of utterances are situated in specific yet complex networks of these particular elements of certain Discourses; they do not exist as such outside these networks. Membership of a Discourse is flagged by the proficiency in the dominant jargon but this situation can sometimes be abused. Mercer (2000: 113-115) highlights the potential for criminal abuse of discursive membership by hoaxers and confidence tricksters who, after presenting forged credentials for the purpose of entering the Discourse community, pursue successful careers in certain professional communities, for instance, in medicine, law, or accountancy, solely because they are able to speak convincingly in the professional jargon of the respective occupational communities. This shows that the ability to move within the relevant Discourse may be at least as important as knowing the actual practices of a particular Discourse community. It is exactly this feature that makes it easy for charlatans to become accepted members of that Discourse community; but it also means that these communities may be ignorant to alternatives to conventional views and thus resistant to change as long as elements of change are not formulated in the appropriate register of that particular discourse.

In his work, the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1977; 2002) elaborates on Discourse as a framework for understanding a particular field of knowledge. Discourses arise out of certain discursive practices which, by using certain typical patterns, develop discursive formations. A Discourse is determined by a set of rules which are not necessarily formal and acknowledged. These largely implied rules determine the sort of statement that can be made; for instance, the statement “the moon is made of blue cheese” is not a valid within a scientific Discourse, but it can be valid within a poetic Discourse. The Discourse also determines what the criteria for “truth” are, what sort of things can be talked about, and what sort of things can be said about them (cf. Baldwin et al. 2004: 30).

Foucault (1977; 2002) is particularly interested in the relationship between Discourse and power. Discursive formations are political in character and contain ideological stances, and they are constituted by spoken or written texts. Foucault suggests that Discourses systematically construct the subjects and worlds for a specific social sphere. For example, it is not so much in catching the criminal that power is expressed but much more in the preceding activities of producing the notion of the criminal. Without the Discursive construct of the criminal, there would be no such institutions as the police, the penal code, or the prison. It is this body of knowledge – the Discourse of criminology – that gives rise to ways of dealing with the criminal. Foucault suggests: “There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations” (Foucault 1977: 27). Hence, the whole sphere of criminology with its manifestations of legal documents, the police, and the prison are created together in a particular Discourse, not suddenly, but historically as a result of supporting D/discursive formations. Thus, one can speak of D/discursive formations of constructs of elements of “reality;” objects and institutions therefore cannot be experienced and understood a priori but only within the order of a discursive formation in which the object or institution in question has been allocated a specific place (cf. Münckler 2002: 328).

Discourses do not exist in mutually exclusive relations; they are structured and interrelated. Thus, there also exists an asymmetrical power relationship between them, as some Discourses are more prestigious, legitimated, and obvious than others. Hence much of the social process of making sense in public spaces (for example, in school, media, parliament, but also in intersubjective communication) is derived, according to Foucault (1977), from an ideological struggle between different Discourses. On a personal level, D/discourses contribute to the transformation of subjective constructs of meaning because they are open to social discursive shaping in several Discourse worlds. These are normally not regulated (except in formal situations) and develop a dynamic of their own which is not under the direct control of any one of the participants in the D/discourse. Therefore, the subjective positioning (in the passive) is always open to potentially detrimental forces inherent in different D/discourses and requires constant reconstruction of meaning by the individual, based on the multitude of information and influences he or she is exposed to.

The subjective positioning (in the active) is based on what a subject construes as his or her interests, ambitions, and discursive moves, and how he or she presents and represents himself or herself discursively, socially, culturally, and psychologically through the use of symbolic systems. In acting out one’s daily life, one confers meaning on situations, not only as a result of immediate sensory stimulation, but also (and mainly) in accordance with successful past discursive and narrative constructs in the larger framework of a particular Discourse and genre. This in turn guides subjects’ ways of construing what happens to them and, consequently, their reactions and attitudes to those interpreted occurrences. This process narrows down, or even excludes, certain alternative reactions due to the (non-)availability of certain Discourses: “Given that a person is always trying to make sense of their life and the situations around them, they cannot just abandon their established discursive positionings and put nothing in their place. Alternative meanings have to arise and be validated in some way” (Harré and Gillet 1994: 127). Although each subject construes events, experiences, objects, and memories differently according to their specific interests, values, and discursive orientations, he or she is basically open to alternative constructs within the Discourse, particularly if one or more of his or her particular actions was unsuccessful; now the subject has to develop new perspectives of prediction and likeliness of occurrence:

Here, Harré and Gillet emphasize the active positioning which can be done very deliberately so that the individual, from his or her subjective perspective, enhances his or her standing in the Discourse. Although the positioning is being done in the active, the individual has no absolute control over the result of this process which is, to a large extent, predictable, thanks to Discursive formations and genres. Thus, genres and D/discourses function as a central sphere, not only for the intersubjective construction of meaning (including institutions and possible worlds), but also for the construction of the personal and social identities of people moving within them. Harré and Gillet’s metaphor of a symphony of meaning (which is reminiscent of Saussure’s [1974: 18] metaphor of language as a symphony of signs; cf. Section 4.1) captures the collaborative construction of meaning in a D/discourse in addition to the subjective D/discursive, social, linguistic, and cultural competence needed to fully appreciate the meaning.

Genres refer to a socially valid type of language use with defined subject positions (e.g., interviews, or TV news), whereas Discourse is a social practice containing an area of knowledge which is defined from a particular perspective (e.g., the Discourse of feminism or Marxism). Just like genres, some Discourses are culture-specific in their organization of meaning (e.g., the Discourse of juju) but others are cross-culturally valid, for instance, academic, technological, or business Discourses (or elements thereof). Therefore, they can be exploited for L2 learning in the sense of creating an awareness on the part of the L2 learner of the structuring and generating power of Discourse not only for the L2, but also for the L1.

4.6 Intersubjectivity

Any human interaction, be it verbal or non-verbal, takes place in a space between two or more participants who engage in interaction from different respective subject positions, different levels of access to discursively constructed social knowledge, and different degrees of sociocultural background knowledge. On the basis of their subjectively internalized knowledge, interlocutors have, consciously or not, construed certain goal orientations which they bring into the process of interacting with others. However, the interactants do not simply transmit information from sender to receiver in a one-dimensional fashion, but simultaneously negotiate and construct meaning and their subject-positions in the process of interaction, set in a particular sociocultural context and fraught with different interpretations, goals, ambitions, and motivations. True intersubjectivity means that people are able to transcend their private worlds mainly by semiotic means, influenced by intersubjective physiological displays of emotions, be it consciously (e.g., in the form of feigning or suppressing anger, shame, fear, etc.) or unconsciously without understanding their significance. In the first case, emotions can be managed (cf. Theodosius 2012) and strategically used in interaction. In the latter case, the experience of emotion cannot be suppressed (since the subject is not aware of it), but because of physiological manifestations of the emotion (e.g., blushing) it has an effect on intersubjective construction of meaning; it is observable for others and consequently emotional states of the interlocutor can be inferred by the other interactants.

Interaction is the prime facilitator of intersubjectivity. It is characterized by a transitory and temporal state of the mind since its main purpose is the communicative production of an immediate dynamic basis for negotiating and coordinating the differences in spaces and positions of the interactants. It is driven by the desire to co-construct coherent and viable meaning and pursue certain objectives in interaction (although this is not always the case, for example, in formulae of greeting, such as “How are you?” where no extensive or serious answer is expected). This joint communicative activity is, as far as mental functions are concerned, established in semiotic interaction in which the activity is dialogically or multilogically structured. Usually, it is neither rationally planned by the interlocutors nor brought about by any external causes; rather, the state of intersubjectivity is produced in the spontaneously occurring activity of spreading out spaces between the interlocutors, offering, rejecting, changing, and accepting subject positions in the process.

During the activity of interacting, the participants are typically aware not only of the intentions and motives of the other interlocutors, but also of their general worldview, including their beliefs and attitudes. In psychology, this phenomenon has become known as Theory of Mind (e.g. Premack and Woodruff 1978; Doherty 2009), which can be defined as the ability of human beings, in place roughly from the age of four years (but starting to develop from the age of 18 months, cf. Doherty 2009: 4-5), to attribute the mental state of another person (and of oneself) in terms of desires, beliefs, knowledge, intentions, and emotions to oneself and to others and understand that others have mental states different from one’s own. The internal state of another’s mind, however, can be inferred from whatever cues are available, relating back to the knowledge of the spectrum of one’s own feelings, intentions, desires, and beliefs. This ability of putting oneself in the other’s place means that we can posit their intentions and predict their next course of action so that we can construct our action accordingly. However, we cannot directly access or observe the mind of self or others, but we have to intuit our own mind through introspection and infer the state of mind of others by their actions. Since its inception by Premack and Woodruff in 1978, the Theory of Mind framework has become a major empirical field of research in psychology. However, it is flawed, as it is operating with concepts of isolated minds that are mere objects of knowledge. This approach ignores the fact that the mind, the emotion, and behavior of individuals are shaped by the action and language of other people in a community that is culturally constituted. From this perspective, understanding the mental states of other people is not the result of “the ingenious one-off contrivance (or innate activation) of some psychological mechanism, but is the accumulating product of the progressive enculturation of the individual” (Sharrock and Coulter 2009: 87; emphasis in the original). The other person and I are not meeting as unitary and self-enclosed individuals, but we have acquired a wide array of cultural, linguistic, and social skills which enable us to develop a co-constructed and shared understanding of situations, concepts, others (in terms of emotions, actions, perspectives, and attitudes) and each other by participatory intersubjective interaction and blending of spaces. Thus, the framework of Theory of Mind will not be used in this book; instead the related concept of empathy will be used in the double-meaning of Einfühlungsvermögen (i.e., the ability to feel with the other, relating more to the intuitive emotional aspects) and Perspektivenübernahme (i.e., perspective-taking, relating more to the cognitive aspects). The concept of empathy puts emphasis on shared cultural, social, and linguistic skills as the basis for participatory interaction and co-construction of meaning which the Theory of Mind paradigm largely ignores.

In the activity of spreading out their mental spaces, interlocutors temporarily suspend their own beliefs and attitudes, hence momentarily adopting the attitudes of others and changing their attitudes, opinions, and subject positionings. This is done on the spot in the spontaneously responsive sphere of meaningful communication, where the participants are acting, not individually and independently of one another, but collaboratively as a collective. We typically assume that our counterparts share not only our understanding of the kind of interaction we are presently involved in, but also our basic assumptions about values, purposes, goals, and ambitions which are important for creating a shared frame of reference (which normally does not give rise to problems within speech communities). Thus, intersubjectivity is not only located in actual ongoing verbal interactions, but it also has a historical dimension, in that it can also be found in shared experiences, inferences, connotations, and memories.

Casual conversation is often seen as insignificant because it frequently appears to be rather aimless and of trivial content, having the main purpose of confirming and continuing the social relationship between the interactants, rather than exchanging relevant information or constructing relevant meaning. Eggins and Slade (1997) challenge this myth, as they understand casual conversation as being the crucial site for the co-construction of meaning: “This is what we regard as the central paradox of casual conversation. The paradox lies in the fact that casual conversation is the type of talk in which we feel most relaxed, most spontaneous and most ourselves, and yet casual conversation is a critical site for the social construction of reality” (Eggins and Slade 1997: 16). In casual (but also in formal) conversation, the interactants operate with contextualization cues which they use in the form of situated inferences and which they try to decipher by drawing on the culturally shared frames of expectation which are applied in the concrete discourse (cf. Kramsch 1998: 35). The collective conduct of conversation implies that responsibility is shared among the interlocutors and that the course of conversation itself can therefore determine the contribution of the interlocutors and the degree of their blending of spaces. Thus, the German philosopher Gadamer suggests:

Therefore, contributions to an interaction cannot always be pinned down to the mental states and intentions of the individual interlocutors. The contributions of the interlocutors, in terms both of content and manner, are to a large extent emergent in the interaction itself which seems to unfold in its own right, following its own terms, but generally guided by the requirements of a certain Discourse, narrative, or genre. The various subject-positionings, motivations, and the objectives of the interlocutors before and during interaction, their ability to recognize Discourses or genres and to adhere to their respective requirements, as well as their ability to read the other interactants’ spaces and voices, are important contextual factors in influencing communication on a psychological level. However, contextualization is not an explication for the participants in the conversation but serves as an indication of parallel co-construction on the basis of shared background knowledge. The complexity of factors influencing interaction between two or more people makes it very difficult to analyze, in theoretical terms, the state of intersubjectivity in communication and the joint construction of a transient, temporarily shared “reality.” Intersubjectivity is also not only located in the immediate emerging state of interaction but can be located in shared memories and experiences, connotations, and projections. Engaging in conversation means moving temporarily beyond oneself, to see the subject-matter from the position of (cultural) others, and consequently qualifying and transforming one’s previously held views. Good conversations have the potential to change the interlocutors’ stances in the long run by opening up and adopting new concepts and perspectives, as Gadamer (1975: 348) suggests: “Reaching an understanding in conversation presupposes that both partners are ready for it and are trying to recognize the full value of what is alien and opposed to them.” Intersubjective communication requires not an insistence on one’s point of view but an openness and playfulness which can make us lose our selves in the connection to another (or others) during an engaging conversation. Intersubjective communication has neither a fully orderly nor a fully disorderly structure, neither a fully subjective nor a fully objective character; it is located in-between these opposites.

In a similar fashion to Gadamer, Goffman (1967: 113) discusses the spontaneously emergent “involvement obligations” and other responsibilities which interlocutors face in sustaining joint spontaneous involvement in interactions, along with some of the “involvement offences” that can be committed by becoming too willful or dominant in (inter-)actions. Like Gadamer, he notes the transient status of conversation when he suggests that, “a conversation has a life of its own and makes demands on its own behalf” (Goffman 1967: 113). However, the same interaction is usually interpreted or received differently by participants, leading to different kinds of involvement which can, of course, change in the course of the interaction. Goffman explains this aspect of involvement which can also disrupt smooth interaction:

Thus, the minute system of participatory engagement in conversation creates spaces for the co-construction of viable “realities” which are of crucial importance for subjective acts of construction. Although contextual knowledge is normally inferred tacitly (cf. Chapter 8), interlocutors can appeal to this knowledge explicitly, for instance, in the case of misunderstandings, hence utilizing the metalinguistic property of language. This metalinguistic level is also used regularly by speakers in order to make sure that their utterances have been understood in the intended manner when they feel that they might have been misunderstood. Interaction, therefore, contributes not only to the sphere of intersubjectivity, but also to the collaborative construction of a viable “reality,” not only for the individual as an embodied subject and for the interactants as a collective, but also for the speech community at large. If intersubjectivity refers to the “probalistic nature of mutual understanding” (Yamada 2005: 86), then achieving intersubjectivity to a high degree is relatively unproblematic in monolingual and monocultural interaction (where interlocutors usually share a large fund of presuppositions and tacit background knowledge, mediated by symbolic systems). In intercultural communication, however, the socioculturally distributed forms of tacit knowledge alluded to by individual interlocutors may not immediately be available to all participants. This can be the case for an interlocutor who does not have the same history of shared interaction as others, or someone who is not a member of the same Discourse community, for example, a L2 learner.

4.7 Blending spaces

The foundational research on conceptual metaphors by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff (1987), and others has shown the prominence of metaphorical thought in everyday life (cf. Section 3.4). This has led to a greater emphasis of metaphor studies within comprehensive models of human cognition, communication, and culture. Metaphor now tends to be seen as part of a larger system of human cognition and culturally embedded communicative practices; metaphor is understood to be produced and understood without extraordinary cognitive effort. The emphasis of metaphor studies has shifted in recent years from the question of how metaphors are understood to questions of where metaphors come from (e.g., brains, bodies, language, or culture) and how they are constrained by different Discourses (e.g., language, music, gesture, art). Blended space theory (also known as Conceptual Blending Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory), as proposed by Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner, and others, originating from metaphor studies, takes a broader approach to cognitive dimensions of how meaning is constructed. By contrast to conceptual metaphor theory which posits the mapping between two mental representations (“target” and “source,” cf. Section 3.4), blended space theory is more complex in that it conceptualizes cognitive organization, not in terms of domain, but of mental space which is a partial and temporary cognitive structure that interlocutors construct when talking or thinking about a perceived situation or configuration. Mental spaces are normally used to model dynamic mappings in language and thought. They provide the terrain for composing novel conceptual elements from certain inputs to a structure that cannot be found in the original inputs. Blending processes are by no means restricted to conceptual metaphors, but they relate to all mental processes of producing new meaning, including counterfactuals and conditionals. For example, the expression red tape denotes the fact that documents of legal proceedings were once tied together with a reddish ribbon. When there were many documents of legal proceedings visible in an office or in a court, one could observe a lot of red tape on a desk. The phrase red tape has subsequently taken on a meaning standing for (exaggerated) bureaucracy; the metonymic relationship, however, has been lost so that (as is typically the case) the meaning of this expression is taken to be metaphorical (cf. Niemeier 2005: 105). Thus, the original input in the blend has been lost.

Mental spaces emerge in the cognitive domains built up by D/discourse in order “to provide a cognitive substrate for reasoning and for interfacing with the world” (Fauconnier 1997: 34). Fauconnier and Turner (2002: 40) suggest that “mental spaces are very partial. They contain elements of a situation and are typically structured by frames. They are interconnected, and can be modified as thought and discourse unfold.” Mental spaces are thus short-term constructs informed by more general and more stable structures of cultural knowledge (such as prototypes, schemata, frames, ICMs etc.; cf. Chapter 3) and are associated with a particular domain. These spaces can be very dynamic and temporary, although some can be more general and static, such as the understanding of the concept “house” (which can refer to many manifestations of this concept, such as a castle, a shed, a bungalow, a skyscraper, etc.). Each space contributes to a complex and interconnected network of spaces which has the potential to project certain spaces in order to re-categorize earlier information and map the new information onto the old domain.

In blended space theory, the overall structure of the blended mental space consists of four different spaces. These spaces include a “generic” space, at least two different “input” spaces, and the “blended” space. The generic space “reflects some common, usually more abstract structure and organization shared by the inputs and defines the core cross-space mapping between them” (Fauconnier 1997: 149); it is related to culturally generated structures in terms of frames (cf. Section 3.2). The two input spaces share some domain-specific information and are mapped across the spaces in a manner similar to the mapping of source and target domains in conceptual metaphor theory (cf. Section 3.4). Simultaneously, the two input spaces project select information to the blended space, guided by the structural organization of the generic space. In the resulting “blended” space, the input spaces and the generic space are combined and they interact in terms of producing new knowledge, emerging from the creative blending process. The entire structure of the blend space thus becomes an emergent structure which produces novel meaning in the subjective mind.

Although blended space theory provides a comprehensive model of cognitive processes, it operates with metaphors of conceptual packets, generic space, input spaces, and blending which tend to support an essentialist understanding of these items and processes on the basis of separating various discrete elements (cf. Ritchie 2004; Uttal 2011: 17-18). This separation works against a connectionist understanding of mental processes, and the figurative use of central terminology contributes to obscuring processes specified by the model. However, the model still combines explanations of linguistic creativity with explanations of human imagination to a degree that is very useful for the discussion in the context of (intercultural) interaction, particularly if it is taken more metaphorically in terms of blending than Fauconnier and Turner intended.

The activity of blending, which is typically carried out subconsciously, “consists in integrating partial structures from two separate domains into a single structure with emergent properties within a third domain” (Fauconnier 1997: 22). Blending is not something that requires deliberate effort, rather it is frequently “generated on the fly” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 49), although blending typically relies on entrenched mappings and frames. Fauconnier and Turner (2002: 390) suggest that blending is fundamental to the human condition to the extent that, “Living in the human world is ‘living in the blend’ or, rather, living in many coordinated blends.” The input spaces do not necessarily have to be tied to linguistic concepts; they can also include visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, kinesic, and sensual inputs, all of which rely on embodied image-schematic structures for the expression of meaning. For instance, Zbikowski (2008) analyzed the blending of spaces of several classical music pieces with regard to the musical representation of knocking (underlining the musical text) or the temporal enactment of redemption, based on the fourth movement of J.S. Bach’s cantata Nun kommt der Heiden Heiland. Zbikowski (2008: 519) shows how the generic input space of “redemption” guides the blending of the input spaces of the cantata’s text (Christ knocking at the door, believer opening the door) and music (change from dissonant E minor to consonant G major), resulting in the blended space of temporal enactment of redemption, slow and steady progress, and the active path to redemption. In this example, the coordinated input spaces of text and music bring about an emergent understanding (and feeling) of what redemption is about which would not be achieved by using the textual and musical input spaces in isolation. However, it is a property of an optimal blend that the original input spaces and the network of connections activated in the blend should be easy to reconstruct (cf. Lakoff 2008: 31).

The blending process can be differentiated into three basic processes (cf. Fauconnier and Turner 2002): (1) composition (or fusion) refers to the projection of content from each of the inputs into the blended space; (2) completion refers to the filling out of a pattern in the blend (based on subjective and cultural knowledge) which is particularly evident when the mapping includes insinuations or juxtapositions; (3) elaboration refers to the simulated mental performance in the blend which includes connections inherent in the input spaces but not explicitly intended for the blend; however, such connections can take the blend along various possible trajectories.⁵² These complex processes can be demonstrated by using any blended expression, for instance, that of the “state as ship.” The composition includes the two inputs which have been culturally projected in a metaphorical mapping, i.e., the ship as source and the state as target. This blend maps the self-propelled motion of ships onto that of states, paths as courses of action, motion as time, weather as circumstances, location as state of affairs, etc. These conventional metaphors contribute to the cultural framing of the state and its history as a ship plying the seas, thus creating a rich blending framework with multiple spaces for the integration process. Once the metaphor has invoked the image of a large container holding many people (or of a state moving forward through space) and the concept that political events are influenced by the metaphorical weather, these images may evoke culturally entrenched representations of a ship with all the other elements typically associated with ships. However, on closer inspection there may be certain patterns in the blend which need to be filled (or completed) by the subject. For instance, a ship has a material hull, radar, sails, engines, and many more details which are ignored for the blend. This means that the cognition of the subject, guided by culturally entrenched mappings of the generic space, has to complete the blend by conceptually adding or abstracting features of the source (or target) domain so as to understand the intended meaning. Although conceptual frames guide the blending processes, any conceptualization involving metaphors or simple conceptual associations (such as simile or metonymy) is open for subjective elaboration.

Conventional metaphoric relationships can be used as building blocks for complex conceptual blends. For instance, the metaphor of “state as ship” can be elaborated in several directions, be it the notion of “safe harbor,” the image of a “lookout,” “captain,” “sailor,” “helmsman/pilot,” or a “ship of fools” (as was done in 2009 by the Irish author Fintan O’Toole in analyzing, according to the subtitle of the book, “How Stupidity and Corruption sank the Celtic Tiger”). However, the blends are selective by only drawing on some elements of our knowledge of the input domains while ignoring others, such as the size or material substance of the ship, or the fact that states do not actually move across the sea. The processes of selection and elaboration are accomplished by subjective cognition, unconsciously and on the spot, thus drawing on our momentary understandings of conceptual domains (influenced by contextual factors) and the dominance of the target (in comparison to the source) which is explicitly represented in the blend. The knowledge triggered by the input spaces is not stable, as conceptual metaphor theory would imply, but instead consists of relatively flexible structures, guided (but not restrained) by subjectively internalized cultural frames. The selectivity of projection from the input spaces is partially cultural and partially subjective, as well as the blending process itself which is structured by the activities of composition, completion, and elaboration, which are not only characterized by elements of culturality and subjectivity, but also by the situational context (e.g., of interaction) and the nature of the input spaces (e.g., use of contextualization cues, humor, cynicism, sarcasm, etc.).

Thus, inherent in mental blended spaces are several distinct dimensions which can be defined as cultural (i.e., culturally constructed schematic knowledge), subjective (i.e., experiences, memories, desires, identities, and positionings), situational (i.e., psychological context), and physical (i.e., technological concepts underlying certain input spaces). These dimensions can be emphasized to different degrees during processes of blending, and this is particularly evident in the use of conceptual metaphors (cf. Section 3.4). If, as Fauconnier and Turner (2002) assume, the mind is metaphoric in nature, metaphorically-constructed mental spaces always have at least two input spaces: the source domain and the target domain. However, traditional conceptual metaphor theory constructs these input spaces as too static and reductive in terms of single mappings which ignore far richer integration networks constructed by means of overarching principles, such as the flexibility and difference in emphasis of dimensions of input spaces (Fauconnier and Turner 2008: 53-54; see above example of “state as ship”). Traditional conceptual metaphor theory focuses on cross-domain mappings and inference transfer, but the integrations that lie behind observable metaphorical and conceptual systems are of far greater complexity in terms of the subjective dimension of sculpting mental spaces and the culturally-built schematic structures that guide the process of mapping.

Subjective levels of access to cultural systems vary, and when processes of mapping and blending take place, subjective experiences, emotions, memories, and desires are also drawn upon so that “meaning construction is supported and effected by highly elaborate dynamic systems” (Fauconnier and Turner 2008: 65). When trying to understand and construct new information, we are blending this new information with existing knowledge, not by single mappings, but by complex inferences and conceptual integration, resulting in emergent structures of novel knowledge. However, this novel knowledge is structurally still compatible with the elaborate integration networks of complex mappings (otherwise it would be incomprehensible). For instance, the conceptualization of time can vary considerably according to how it is subjectively experienced in particular situations; an hour can be conceptualized as a “slow hour,” yet it can also be seen as passing quickly, depending on circumstance. In both metaphoric concepts, the domain of time is blended with that of speed and the subjective blended experience of time passing slowly (or quickly), thus overriding the physical fact that time always passes at the same rate, be it measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc. The emergent blend is determined by the immediate attitude of the subject conceptualizing time from the input mental space of momentarily felt subjective experience, whereas the physical reality is ignored for the blend. The blend, however, also uses cultural schemata which legitimize the mapping of the time domain to that of space. Blended domains such as these then can be used as one of the input spaces into new blends, for example, the “cyclic day” which is a blend of the physical reality of the synchronicity of time in terms of its unfolding and the human perception of the coming and going of days, as determined by the day-night rhythm, which in turn is a result of the rotation of the planet earth.

The universal event of time is measured in fragmented timepieces such as seconds, minutes, or hours which enable us to perceive units of time with a definite duration between beginning and end, suggesting the mapping of time onto the space domain: “In the emergent structure of the blended space, the universal event [of time] becomes a universal spatial length, and therefore a measure, analogous to yards, meters, and so on” (Fauconnier and Turner 2008: 59). The time event has, then, a length, and subjective experience can be counterfactual, as in “The lecture went on forever,” or, to insinuate a different subjective experience “The lecture went slowly for me but quickly for her,” implying different levels of subjective engagement. Although everything on Earth is moved through the universal event of time at the same rate, the new blend of subjectively experienced time as space “derives its motion from the network in which time moves, but derives its landmark from the network in which Ego moves” (Fauconnier and Turner 2008: 61), hence blending subjective feelings of duration with the speed of motion. The subjective space in turn can be heavily influenced by very specific memories, experiences, desires, or dreams which can be triggered by minute details, for example, coming across a certain configuration in the lecture which reminds the subject of certain previous experiences and leads to the mind wandering off in this direction, instead of paying attention to what is being said by the lecturer.

In the human mind, processes of identity-construal, integration, and imagination inextricably work together. In these processes, the mind uses projected or metaphorical understandings by bringing mental spaces together, or blending them, in order to create novel understandings of situations, experiences, memories, configurations, and self. Thus, “blending imaginatively transforms our most fundamental human realities, the parts of our lives most deeply felt and most clearly consequential” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 28). Fauconnier and Turner (2002: 28-36) provide several elaborate examples of this mechanism, one of which relates to cultural sexual practices in Tokyo, where rooms in bordellos (called “image clubs”) are made to look like schoolrooms, complete with blackboards. The prostitutes, all chosen for their youthful looks, play the role of pupils, dressed in school uniforms, and acting like apprehensive teenagers. The customers take the role of a teacher. Thus, the blend has as protagonists a teacher and a secondary school student, acting in an imaginary school context. The purpose of this blend, for the customer, is to imagine having sex with a school girl (which in reality he cannot legally have); he can inhabit this blended space mentally while in actuality being aware of the fact that the prostitute is not really a pupil but only pretending to behave like one. However, the blend is more complex than this:

The blending processes are even more complex, as some projections to the blend are stronger than others. For example, the role of the teacher is not typically filled to the extent that the customer actually sets mathematical assignments for the “pupil” or tries to teach her a second language. Blending here is not just a projection of inferences but facilitates novel integrated action. However, the role of the woman in this blend is that of a subaltern (both as an imaginary pupil and a professional prostitute) who is being paid for her involvement, and her blends of the situation may be fundamentally different from those of the customer (e.g., mapping the whole situation to her typical workplace, without adopting the blends of the school metaphor). This example of mapping the whorehouse onto the schoolhouse, giving rise to many blends within this frame, shows that mental spaces can “juggle representations that, in the real world, are incompatible with each other” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 30). This implies that blending spaces in the mind transcends the normal reign of consciousness and that “consciousness can glimpse only a few vestiges of what the mind is doing” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 34).

The process of blending spaces is thus an integral part of everyday life of which we are typically not aware. It involves concepts that are blended in the subjective mind, and the process of blending is structurally guided by cultural frames and subjective experiences, memories, fantasies, and desires. The processes of conceptual blending are, however, not confined to spaces within a linguistic or cultural community; they can transcend these realms in the mind of the subject by combining elements of different linguistic and cultural communities and hence create new meanings in an intercultural dimension. These novel meanings are typically characterized by a higher degree of subjectivity than intracultural blends because the cultural frames of the generic input space have lost some of their structuring powers for the blending process which now has to draw on several cultural frames, albeit to different degrees, not least because different degrees of cultural competence are involved. In the mind, the learner blends the initially familiar concepts of the native culture with the corresponding concepts of the other culture to which he or she tries to gain access. This intercultural blending of concepts has the potential to decenter the native L1-mediated concepts and does not fully integrate the L2-mediated concepts, thus creating a complex mix of elements of both, influenced by the degree of cultural competence and conceptual grasp of the learner’s present level of learning and of intercultural competence (cf. Section 10.2).

Blended space theory, as developed by Fauconnier, Turner, and others, focuses on cognitive processes of blending. It is not so much concerned with cultural difference and diversity which may have a significant impact on the generic space. Therefore, blended space theory ignores important human conditions that clearly influence the blending process, such as psychological, emotional, attitudinal, or behavioral domains, and differences in cultural traditions. For the discussion in this book, blended space theory is understood in a more inclusive manner; the original blended space theory of Fauconnier, Turner, and others is taken as a basic model of producing novel meaning and is transferred to other domains than cognition. The contributing elements of the blended mental space, i.e., the generic space and the two (or more) input spaces, cannot be identified in a precise manner when the model is transferred to the domains of emotion, behavior, and attitudes because of the absence of clearly definable concepts for these spaces, due to the very dynamic and in parts hardly verbalizable elements of these domains. In the context of intercultural L2 learning, the processes of blending refer to changes in aspects of behavior, attitudes, emotions, and identities as a result of having experienced culturally sanctioned modes of acting and reacting in the L2 and its sociocultural context for these domains which may be different from the internalized modes of one’s own cultural community. The space opened up between the behavior, emotions, and attitudes of the L2 learner which are based on social structures, cultural patterns, and subjective positionings, and culturally diverse modes of feeling, behaving, and valuing is filled by subjective blends located between these internalized features and those newly encountered in the L2 classroom (in a progressive manner).

For example, culturally constructed national stereotypes of the Germans as ruthlessly efficient, the French as arrogant, the English as patient, the Spaniards as hot blooded, the Belgians as dull, etc., can change with real-life personal encounters with people from these nations who do not conform to the stereotype at all, and consequently one adjusts one’s attitude accordingly (cf. Section 10.2, Principle 4). However, this change in attitude is brought about not only by the unmediated experience of otherness, but also by the cognitive effort of trying to comprehend the actions of the other and relate it to the stereotypical image of the other. In a similar manner, the change of attitude as a result of blending internalized frames with newly experienced, diverse, and culturally constructed frames is provided by the Swedish student KAL (cf. Chapter 10.3, Principle 8) who encountered the widespread phenomenon of employed housemaids in El Salvador. At first, based on her Swedish cultural frame of reference (i.e., the generic space), she intuitively objected to the fact that affluent families employ housemaids because of the whiff of economic exploitation and the fact that housemaids are not treated as equals in the household (i.e., input space 1). However, staying in her Salvadorian host family, she had to deal directly with their housemaid on a daily basis (i.e., input space 2). Gradually, her attitude changed because she was able to contextualize the constellation from a different cultural frame (i.e., input space 2): “It was hard accepting the fact that she [the housemaid] was going to do things for me that I could do (...). After some time I could focus on the positive aspects and see her point of view. She was lucky to have a job that she liked and where she was treated well” (KAL, cited in Lundgren 2009: 145). The adoption of the other’s rationale for the wide spread existence of housemaids in El Salvador in terms of employment opportunities in an otherwise depressed economy and in terms of culturally acceptable forms of intersubjective behavior at the workplace led to the blended attitude of principally still being critical of such forms of exploitation, but on the other hand approving of them, given the local economic, social, and cultural context.

For the emotional domain, although most concepts and metaphors are grounded in universal bodily experiences, there is a significant cultural framing of these experiences which can lead to variation in the kind of source domains in emotion metaphors across different cultures. Kövecses (2008) analyzes a variety of emotion metaphors across cultures, most of which can allegedly be traced back to the generic-level metaphor EMOTIONS ARE FORCES. However, when emotions transcend the linguistic and conceptual levels, it is difficult to apply blended space theory in this regard. Cacciari (2008) provides some interesting examples of cross-sensory blends. In an experiment evoking unconventional cross-modal correspondence carried out by Koehler (1947, cited in Cacciari 2008: 438), participants were presented with two meaningless visual shapes (one of them with sharp changes in the visual direction of the lines, the other with rounded shapes) and asked them to pair each shape with either the linguistic label Takete or with Maluma. Although they had never seen or heard these stimuli before, the participants unambiguously associated the graph with the sharp changes in the visual direction of the lines with Takete and rounded one with Maluma (cf. Cacciari 2008: 438). This surprisingly unanimous result can be interpreted by the link between phonemic and perceptual-geometrical properties, or by the reflection of the sharp inflections of the sound and the movement of the tongue on the palate in the sharp changes in the visual directions of the lines for Takete. According to Gestalt psychologists, the visual forms and phonemes forming the linguistic labels share an evocative trait or expressive property that belongs to the object but are perceived by the subject as part of his or her experience, and are thus not “occasional emotional vibrations, but the contribution of emotion to the cognitive side of perception” (Massironi 2000: 12, cited in Cacciari 2008: 438). These expressive properties of shapes, sounds, or colors are not so much emotional projections or experience-based associations but real and objective carriers of properties contained in the optical (or phonetic) array. The unreflected domains of intuition and of emotion can, therefore, influence and aid cognitive efforts of trying to make sense.

Fauconnier and Turner (2002; 2008) discuss many examples of conceptual blending; while the process of blending may be seen as universal, most of the examples provided relate to Western cultural frames. For instance, the example of time as space and its subjectively felt duration (see above) is presented from a Western point of view where the natural event of time passing has been indicated for centuries by artificial time-measuring instruments such as clocks which make measurements of time countable like objects and valuable in terms of rewards for someone’s work (e.g., paid by the hour, giving rise to metaphors such as “time is money”). However, Fauconnier and Turner (2008) do not take into consideration other cultural conceptualizations of time which are marked by the absence of technological timekeeping instruments. As discussed in Section 3.5, fundamentally different cultural frames (compared to Western conceptualizations) have given rise to fundamentally different blends, resulting in culturally-specific subjective and collective conceptualizations and experiences of universally identical phenomena such as the day-night cycle of time (e.g., the Hopi conceptualization of the day as the visits of the same person, including the derived blends which are translated into action in terms of trying to influence the person’s attitude for the next visit; cf. Section 3.5). While the metaphorical nature of conceptual blending is evident in all human languages and cultures, metaphorical mappings rely on different cultural frames and input spaces that may be very specific to a culture and to culturally-influenced subjective domains of cognition, emotion, and behavior which have developed in a historical dimension. In intercultural scenarios of interaction and construction of meaning, these differences in input spaces can give rise to misunderstandings, or they can lead to the integration of the Other into the dominant frames of the subjectively internalized culture and language which, to a large extent, influence the conceptual blending processes. These potential drawbacks in intercultural understanding can be overcome by learning the L2 and the inherent cultural frames of the other culture in its historical development and pragmatic use. But even then the conceptual blending of culturally diverse input spaces and frames frequently results in blends that cannot be attributed to either of the cultural patterns of construal involved because the generic input space has lost its cultural structuring quality; since the cultural frames are used in the plural, the generic input space must rely on elements of frames of both (or more) cultures. Because the generic input space has shifted from established and internalized cultural frames to emergent intercultural constructs, the crosscultural conceptual blends rely more on subjective positionings in intercultural spaces which are characterized by the subject’s level of access to the inherent languages, cultures, and mappings. The intercultural blend is hence characterized by less authoritative structuring in terms of internalized cultural knowledge; it relies more on subjective knowledge of patterns, metaphors, mappings and conceptualizations, as well as the subject’s level of experiences, feelings, memories, and desires. Thus, the intercultural blend may require a higher degree of subjective knowledge and cognitive effort in the processes of cultural learning and blending, at least in the initial and intermediate stages of L2 learning, before the semiotic gap can be closed again by the internalization of the intercultural third place as the basis for all processes of thought, emotion, and behavior.

Kramsch (2009a: 48-50) provides an example of one such intercultural blend, derived from the American-English concept of independent and the corresponding German concept of unabhängig. Both concepts have as their generic input the foundational meaning of someone or something not being dependent on someone or something else. Although defined in dictionaries as semantically identical, both concepts have undergone different socio-historical developments in their respective cultures. The American-English concept is mapped onto the political event of achieving independence from Great Britain in 1776 and the subsequent democratic system adopted in the USA. The political and emotional resonances of this historic event are kept alive by the annual ritual of Independence Day as the national holiday. Thus, the term independent is culturally and emotionally loaded for Americans. The German mapping of unabhängig is lacking these political, democratic, and emotional dimensions due to different historical developments. The German term for independent, therefore, stresses different mappings which are centered on the individual, rather than the nation. These relate to the financial status of the individual, but also his or her independence as a legal and social subject. Both dimensions are only bestowed at entering adulthood at the age of 18 years when the person exits the status of Unmündigkeit (‘immaturity’) and Abhängigkeit (‘dependence’). Upon successfully taking the school-leaving examinations (‘Abitur’) at the end of grammar school (‘Gymnasium’), the individual has reached the state of social maturity, as the Abitur is also known as Reifezeugnis (‘maturity certificate’). Thus, the German mappings of unabhängig stress the moral, developmental, and maturational aspects of being (or becoming) independent, whereas the American mappings have a distinctly political and emotional dimension. By creating the blend, the German or American-English L2 learner has to integrate these mappings which could look like the following (adapted from Kramsch 2009a: 49):

The blend combines elements of both inputs and generates a new, or emerging, structure for the concept. This is based on both the American-English and German mappings for the terms but goes beyond each of these inputs to create a new concept. The blend is more general than the original input spaces because it does not rely on the specific socio-political developments that have informed the culture-bound concepts in a historical perspective. Rather, it abstracts the crossculturally valid elements and combines them into the blended concept. These processes of blending concepts, even across cultures, are not a product of deliberate effort because: “Nearly all important thinking takes place outside of consciousness and is not available on introspection” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 33). However, in an analytical effort of completion of the input spaces, one could reflect on the historically informing spaces of 18^th century era of German Enlightenment and the American Declaration of Independence. In addition, one can also “run the blend” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 44) by reminding ourselves “that any point on the path in the blend projects back to counterpoints in the input spaces” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 44). Thus, one could discuss the reasons for emphasizing particular elements of the input spaces in the blend in the context of the emerging subjective third spaces of the L2 learner.

Blended space theory, as developed by Fauconnier, Turner, and others, provides deep insights into the mind’s hidden complexities by persuasively explaining the mechanisms of creating novel meaning in the mind. Although blended space theory does not explicitly make reference to intercultural scenarios, it can be used in a particularly productive manner for intercultural L2 learning. During the process of learning the L2 in its cultural context over a sustained period of time, the input spaces, and in particular the generic space, change from being influenced by frames originating in one cultural tradition to frames which are increasingly based between cultures. This process, in turn, has repercussions for the level of subjectivity influencing the generic space, due to the structural loss of power of the monocultural frames. The subjective elements of the blended spaces also move in the direction of intercultural places so that these actually represent blends of intercultural blends, contributing to an intercultural network of blends available to the subjective mind of the L2 learner at a specific point in the development of intercultural competence (cf. Section 10.2). Blended space theory offers a constructive framework for conceptualizing the complex processes of mapping and blending which are necessary when trying to gain access to the linguistic, cultural, and social conceptualizations of the L2 speech community from the basis of internalized L1-mediated conceptualizations. The resulting blended spaces are not stable conceptual packets in the mind of the L2 learner, but are dynamic and partial structures that are constantly being revised and reconstructed in the ever more complex process of L2 learning. When conceptual blending is explicitly brought into the L2 learning process, for example, by discussing and reflecting upon the different input spaces and the interculturally-oriented generic space in their specific contribution to the construction of the intercultural blend for certain concepts, it can lead to enhanced critical language awareness and a deeper understanding of (inter-)cultural frames. At the same time, complex conceptual blends that infuse everyday instances of making meaning within and across cultures can be deconstructed and traced back to the different input spaces and the generic space, thus making the processes of constructing intracultural, but also intercultural, meaning more transparent for the L2 learner.