Conceptual Blending

Although I thought that this article was difficult to read (I haven't kept up with my linguistic jargon), I settled upon Fauconnier's basic idea of conceptual blending. The idea is that people use simple, comfortable, and old ideas to learn new concepts and skills. An example of this is the skier (or snowboarder) who is trying to stay upright. His instructor tells him to pretend that he's carrying a tray of croissants and champagne. This concept that he's familiar with helps him with the development of his new skill. Eventually, the motion becomes natural, and he no longer has to rely upon the idea of carrying croissants to ski. Basically, humans rely upon past experience and thoughts to fit new ones into their heads. In a way, it implies that humans, at birth, are not blank slates, but that they are building upon genetic experience. We can only understand things if they can be related to what we know.

When I considered relating conceptual blending to religion, I immediately thought of the psalms, or just general religious literature. When we read the bible or the psalms, we take what we read and apply it to our own lives. We take the psalms as historic literature, but the emotions and feelings are so universal that we can apply them to our own lives. We don't completely understand the historical context of when the psalm was reading, but humans can relate to emotion. We use our own emotion to understand the psalms, and therefore apply them to our lives. We can also perhaps use our own modern context and apply events to these biblical events. It's an interesting idea, but makes complete sense.