Stylistic Devices and Creativity in Popular Science Headlines 323such questions in the form of their ‘optimality principles’ or ‘constituting’
and ‘governing principles’.
Grady et al. (1999) compare conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) proposed
by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and blending theory (BT). They identify the
main differences between them as (1) the number of input spaces in CMT
is two and in BT is two or more (as shown above); (2) CMT is directional
and BT is not; (3) CMT analyses entrenched conceptualization, while BT
focuses on the on-line processing of the novel expressions or problems.
Finally, conceptual blending theory allows us to drop the old idea of
concepts as static structures in long-term memory in favour of dynamically
constructed models constrained both by information in long-term memory
and by local, contextual cues (Coulson 2001). It also seems that in BT
models are more likely to be projected from a well-understood domain
onto a less-understood domain. For the above reasons we believe that,
being an integral part of cognitive science and remaining in line with the
main principles of cognitive linguistics, conceptual blending proves to be
the best tool for both describing and understanding the dynamic nature of
metaphors, especially the novel ones, in National Geographic discourse,
and headlines in particular.
Finally, it has already been stated that context seems to play a very
important role in the understanding of metaphorical language. For the sake
of clarity, Kऺvecses (2010) distinguishes two basic kinds of context:
global and local. By global context he means the contextual factors that
affect all members of a language community when they process
metaphors. Global context includes a variety of different contextual factors
such as social and cultural ones. By local context he means the immediate
contextual factors such as physical setting, knowledge of the main entities
in the discourse, the immediate cultural context, the immediate social
setting, and the immediate linguistic context. Local and global contexts are
assumed here to form a continuum from the immediate local contexts to
the most general global ones. The most significant element of criticism of
conceptual metaphor theory was the suggestion that it ignores the study of
metaphors in the context in which metaphorical expressions occur, namely
in real discourse. As a result, it has to be stressed that context is very
important in the creation of novel metaphorical expressions.
According to Kऺvecses (2010), there is yet another form of metaphorical
creativity in discourse – creativity induced by the context in which the
creation and processing of metaphors takes place. This kind of creativity
has not been systematically explored in the cognitive linguistic literature
on metaphors. Kऺvecses (2010) terms the creativity that is based on the
context of metaphorical conceptualization context-induced creativity and