The Blending of Words and Image in Literary Text Based on Conceptual Blending Theory

Roland Barthes identifies two types of relationships between text and image: anchorage and relay. Anchorage helps identify one meaning in the image while it can be potentially the site of multi-farious meanings. The complementary relationship of text and image is called Relay. Furthermore، Kress and Leeuwen have suggested another relationship، called “one image-many words”، in which image is free to construct meaning. However، there are some other types of relations between image and words in a text، which have not been examined by Barthes or even Kress and Leeuwen or other individuals. That is، when an image leads to a metaphoric change in the interpretation of the text، simply the conceptual blending theory (Fauconnier and Turner) could be a proper method to explain how the human’s mind could understand and interpret a new meaning through the interaction of image and words (they said interaction of two different concepts). In the present paper، the way in which visual texts could be created and interpreted in the human’s mind as well as the different types of relations between text and image are studied based on four spaces، which are basic for meaning construction and four different types of blending pattern. Finally، a new relationship، which is not so common in any other texts other than literary one، will be introduced. This paper explores the tools، which are used in literary text to free the meaning from the control of words. It also studies the role of the reader in the interpretation of a text in visual poetry. Furthermore، it is going to argue how the interpretation of a text could be changed by the image، not the text. In conclusion، the image space (input space 1) could map its presupposed common features onto the feature of the words space (input space 2) and then project them into the blending space to create new meaning. So the given meaning could be developed from close meaning to far or metaphoric one through the active role of the reader in the interpretation of the floating signified.