**4. Meaning in postmodern narratives: the approach to cognitive semiotics from biopoetics**

Living beings are organized as immensely complex dynamic hierarchies where immensity is defined in an infinite number of possibilities too broad to cover and whose complex nature implies that they, as we have mentioned before, cannot be modeled in a reductionist way. Biological hierarchies reach these immense complexities through chaotic emergency processes [23]. The visible characteristics of postmodernism are closely linked to this immeasurable breadth that is living: the nonlinear dimension of existence. The unpredictable nature of dynamic systems and the inability to determine or establish a stable origin mark the postmodernist literature—this paradigmatic shift towards disorder was analogous in literature and science [24].

According to Katherine Hayles [25], dealing with complex self-organized systems, chaos is a precursor to order, and not the opposite: from chaos spontaneous emergency emerges and dissipative structures arise from systems far from equilibrium [26]. In the words of Lotman [27], "self-organization processes in

*Cognitive and Intermedial Semiotics*

systems, which are semiotic processes.

their mechanisms should be inclusive to begin with.

propagation in "real-world" systems, both natural and social.

systems may arise from a wide variation of initial conditions.

**3. Complexity and conceptual blending**

framework:

problems, it also contributed to the "epistemological naturalization" of the semiotic

*Meaning was already seen as 'deeper' than its manifested phenomenon; now it was more drastically separated from language and discourse, and conceived as grounded in the biological nature, i.e. the cognitive neurobiology of the human mind. Here, meaning is what happens in the naturally pre-structured mind of persons when they actively or passively perceive or conceive some entity, or when they express* 

As Lakoff and Johnson [7] affirm, our conscious processes are built on functions

That being said, can blend theory help us to discern how different mental spaces

in the conceptual, prelinguistic mind are able to make new meanings emerge, considering not only the dynamically functioning culture and biological constraints but also the emotional states that are now considered by neuroscience a game changer? What is more, if meaning in the pre-structured mind—as Brandt calls it—is at the preconceptual and conceptual levels influenced by emotions as new studies suggest [19], are the existing models enough to explain meaning emergence? Embodied semiotic processes are complex processes, and the models representing

Chaos theories speak of a deterministic (paradoxically) chaos; since there is order in the disorder, there is a profound—though sometimes inaccurate connection between all systems at all levels of its dynamic. According to Gregersen [20], there are, however, differences between chaos theories and complexity theories. Complexity studies try to understand the principles that guide complex systems in order to try to explain how structures are self-organized and ordered without a conscious control organizing the process. These structures arise, are maintained, and develop in a process driven by local agents within the system, and the twists and distortions of this agents produce, very often, consequences that affect the entire system. Complexity theories try to understand these rules of order

Both research on complexity and chaos theories deal with nonlinear processes in which small and simple inputs can generate larger and complex outputs. It is easy to think here in the different dynamics produced by the image-schema relations and the most complex blends both in oral everyday language and in narratives as self-organized systems: while the various trajectories of chaotic systems are highly contingent on the exact values from the initial conditions, complex self-organized

that serve to control our embodied minds and movements in space, hence, the structural characteristic of the metaphor and its biological hook in narratives. On the other hand, also feelings represent both mental and bodily states, and their processes take place through innate provisions. For this reason, an approach that assumes that human experiences are closely linked to certain specifications of the embodied mind is an integrative approach, in contrast to the classical semiotic models that presuppose an approximation of abstract language to interpretation, without specifying how emotion, perception, cognition, and actions are part of a psychophysical totality [17]. Besides, as explained in *The Whole Creature* by Wheeler [18], emergent complexity is the heart of both natural and cultural

*something and 'mean' what they express. ([16], p. 220).*

**4**

far-from-equilibrium conditions correspond to a delicate interplay between chance and necessity, between fluctuations and deterministic laws. We expect that near a bifurcation, fluctuations or random elements would play an important role, while between bifurcations the deterministic aspects would become dominant". We must notice that chaos differs from real arbitrariness in that the first one contains deep coding structures called strange attractors. Where real arbitrariness systems show no discernible patterns when mapped in the phasic space, chaotic systems trace complex patterns on it. For Guerra [28], the poetic text as a complex adaptive system is the richest unit in information and affordances. Therefore, the high order of complexity of the text can be seen as a cognitive biocultural motivation to investigate the complex human poetics as life sciences (dynamic niche that occupies now, after its emergence in the second revolution of cognitive sciences, biopoetic studies). The complex patterns found in *The Crying of Lot 49* can be described through the consistent image-schema relations motivated by emotions [29], the pervasive conceptual metaphors [30], and conceptual blends. Once the models from cognitive linguistics meet biopoetic concerns with the necessity of including complex theory ideas, we will be able to describe the patterns found in the blends. The example we refer to in this paper is a representation of the different blends in the narrative sharing blended spaces as spaces of impossibility.

Meaning integration models operate under the idea that language does not contain meaning but that we access the latter through the former. Thus, language is the product, not of a structural system separated from the brain but of general cognitive processes with which the human mind conceptualizes experience, called embodied understanding by cognitive linguistics [6]. This way, the conceptual metaphors and blends offer the basis of a literature theory rooted in cognitive linguistics. Such as Freeman [31] declares, literary texts are the products of the cognitive minds and their interpretations, the products of other cognitive minds in the context of the physical and sociocultural worlds in which they have been created and read, and there is a need to include these dimensions in the existing models.

Fauconnier and Turner [22] explain in *The Way We Think* that human beings have the most effective abilities for meaning construction and, therefore, for the creation of the most elaborated forms (language, art, music, mathematics, etc.). By themselves, forms are hollow, but they do contain the potential that can be unfolded in dynamic and imaginative ways. Behind the form there is the human power to construct meaning, and the operations found at the heart of meaning are identity, integration, and imagination. Identity has to do with recognizing similarity or equivalence, which is an imaginative and complex unconscious task; identity and opposition and similarity and difference are accessible through consciousness after an elaborated process. Integration consists on finding identities and oppositions; it is part of a much more complex process of conceptual integration, with dynamic and structural properties and operational restrictions. Identity and integration cannot account by themselves the meaning of imagination. Even in the absence of external stimuli, the brain can carry out imaginative simulations: the imaginative processes are always functioning, even in the simplest meaning constructions ([22], pp. 5–6). In fact, when we approach a poetic text, as Burke [32] notices, these processes are active during all the phases of the "literary reading loop," that is, during pre-reading, post-reading, and no-reading of a literary text. According to Burke's oceanic mind theory, the reading process of a literary text highlights the relevance of the unconscious affective cognition and implicit memory (which takes place together with the conscious cognitive emotion and explicit memory).

The integration models proposed in *The Way We Think* [22] depend on what organizing frames or related elements get projected into the blended space and

**7**

*Cognitive Semiotics and Conceptual Blend: A Case Study from* The Crying of Lot 49

which of them becomes the dominant one. One may distinguish four types of blends or networks of an increasing level of complexity: simplex networks, mirror networks, single-scope networks, and double-scope networks. In my analysis in this paper, I will only refer to the most complex network, the double-scope network. A double-scope network is one in which two or more input spaces have different frames, and a combination of these frames becomes the organizing frame for the blend. Double-scope blending can resolve clashes between inputs that differ fundamentally in content and topology, and this is considered an essential tool for human creativity. In the example of this paper, I will show what Turner calls double-scope story, in the form of a four-scope story. "Running two stories mentally, when we should be absorbed by only one, and blending them when they should be kept apart, is at the root of what makes us human" [33]. Here, we will see how three stories clash together to create uncertainty: the stories function,

Biopoetics integrates studies of complex semiotic systems, such as the literary system, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive sciences, from the essentially dynamic theoretical framework of the complexity sciences. One of its objectives is to explain how narratives arise from (and reinforce) the adaptive features of being human. As Marshall [34] states, the universality of narratives suggests an important adaptive objective in human evolution. Some of the hypotheses regarding this suggest that narratives prepare us for specific situations and they contribute to our ability to predict or understand thoughts, feelings, motives, and reactions of others (what psychologists call theory of mind) and to understand that others may perceive something differently from us. Understanding that others may not perceive something as we do is a very complex and sophisticated mental operation, and narratives train us in the notion that many misunderstandings and dissonances arise from this fact. Therefore, narratives meet our needs as an ultra-social species, helping us manage the abundant interpersonal interactions of our daily life. Thus, as Guerra [35] affirms, the importance of biopoetics lies in the fact that it is a primary theory of metacognition. Biopoetics aims to investigate the morphodynamics of natural and artistic language, and of any semiotic system, as a complex bio-social adaptive system. Paradoxically, in this biocultural evolution, academics and artists are experientially located in a metacognitive scaffolding; in the words of Guerra "we are what we make as 'us ', more properly, I am what I make as 'us'" ([35], p. 849). In my thesis, *Biopoetics, cognition and emotion: conceptual integration and emergence in Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49"* [30], I established an approach from biopoetics to the spatial organization of the poetic act. Thus, I proposed that action in space motivates nuclear metaphors and blends that make possible the construction of new meaning. From spatial image schemas, the mental spaces that construct concepts such as entropy and emotion are our basis to observe the cognitive-affective organization of the narrative system. In the thesis I presented a list of 131 conceptual metaphors of the analyzed linguistic metaphorical expressions, a classification according to their target domain and corresponding source domain, the metaphorical focus, and the mappings between source and target domains. This part served as the scaffolding to explain how the conceptual metaphors behave and evolve in the course of the novel and the four-scope story in which several mental spaces projections create a new space of emerging meaning. I

will present the mentioned blends in the next section [36].

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92606*

epistemically, as possibilities.

**5. Biopoetics**

*Cognitive Semiotics and Conceptual Blend: A Case Study from* The Crying of Lot 49 *DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92606*

which of them becomes the dominant one. One may distinguish four types of blends or networks of an increasing level of complexity: simplex networks, mirror networks, single-scope networks, and double-scope networks. In my analysis in this paper, I will only refer to the most complex network, the double-scope network. A double-scope network is one in which two or more input spaces have different frames, and a combination of these frames becomes the organizing frame for the blend. Double-scope blending can resolve clashes between inputs that differ fundamentally in content and topology, and this is considered an essential tool for human creativity. In the example of this paper, I will show what Turner calls double-scope story, in the form of a four-scope story. "Running two stories mentally, when we should be absorbed by only one, and blending them when they should be kept apart, is at the root of what makes us human" [33]. Here, we will see how three stories clash together to create uncertainty: the stories function, epistemically, as possibilities.
