Using Mental Space and Conceptual Blending Theory to analyze two samples of Persian Literary Narratives

In cognitive linguistics, the meaning of linguistic units is determined by the context of use and meaning interpretation is a dynamic process referred to as conceptualization. The conceptualizers are actively involved in this process through developing some on-line mental representations called mental spaces (Fauconnier,1997). Thus these mental spaces and blended spaces derived from them contribute to making sense of complex ideas people perceive through language. Focusing on conceptualizers as the major sources of meaning, cognitive linguistics has proved to be a practical and efficient framework to analyze literary texts. The aim of the present article is to show how the people interpret literary narratives through generating mental spaces. The study tries to give a descriptive-analytic account of two narratives namely the restatement of one part of Kave-e-Ahangar story in Shahnameh and a fable in resale-e-delgosha, two works representing tragic and comic narration respectively. This research used space builders as clues to specify the micro and macro level mental spaces of two narratives. The analysis also revealed that two main conceptual blends would merge in a narrative: emotive and non-emotive that one of them might be dominant in a specific literary genre.