1

‘We Will Arrange a TechnoParty in Your Municipality Too‘:

Mental Spaces and Conceptual Integration in Czech Political Anti-Campaigns

Marek Mikuš

Final paper in the course ‘Applied Semantics’ taught by Dr. Esther Pascual,

academic year 2006/07, Faculty of Social Sciences, Free University, Amsterdam

The aim in this paper is to employ the theories of mental spaces and conceptual integration in a
cognitive-linguistic analysis of political advertisements. More specifically, the naturalistic data to be
examined come from Czech political ‘anti-campaigns’ which were typically commissioned by a
political party (or an interest group backing it) with a view to imitate, recontextualize and thereby
subvert some aspects of the rhetoric and/or political program of an opponent party. All of the
examples are ‘multi-modal’, i.e. they integrate the semiotic modes of text and the visual (cf. Kress,
Leite-García and van Leeuwen 1997), and have been put up on billboards during a longer stretch of
time preceding the Czech parliamentary elections of 2006. Although not necessarily meeting a
function directly linked to elections, they can be quite reliably regarded as a part of pre-election
efforts to avert voters from supporting and eventually voting for rival parties. This ‘guerrilla-style’
of electioneering with a form and content of often populist leaning has become increasingly
frequent in Central Europe. In the last few years, similar examples were to be seen in Slovakia and
Hungary, for instance. As will be shown below, some of the outcomes of the tactic are in fact
identical with the ‘Poison Parasite Defense’ (e.g., Cialdini et al. in print), which has been applied in
commercial and political marketing contexts and enables even relatively weak challengers to
subvert more frequent communications of their rival. In short, this strategy requires that the
challenger send the audience a message that is, first, poisonous - by virtue of a particular type of
counterargument that transforms the opponent’s message - and is, second, parasitic - by virtue of
associative links to the opponent’s message.
I hope to be able to demonstrate not only that the cognitive processes of conceptual
integration are necessary to interpret the billboards, but also that they facilitate the argumentative
and persuasive function of anti-campaigns – their toxicity, so to speak. Indeed, ‘getting the point’
of such a billboard requires opening up new, completely different and perhaps strategically
convenient perspectives on the original campaign or political program which the billboard refers to.
In order to support this argumentation, I will first review the basic tenets of the theory and also
some research that has applied it in similar fields.
 2

Mental Spaces and Conceptual Integration: Theoretical Foundations

The crucial point of departure for the theory is the understanding that, contrary to folk and
commonsensical beliefs, meaning is not straightforwardly and completely contained in language or,
for that matter, any system of signs. In fact, language in relation to cognition should be seen rather
as the proverbial ‘tip of the iceberg’, inevitably so if we take into the account not only the
indexicality and pragmatic orientation of meaning, but also mental operations that construct it. In
the concise wording of the theory’s founder, Gilles Fauconnier, ‘language serves to prompt the
cognitive constructions, by means of very partial, but contextually very efficient, clues and cues’
(Fauconnier 1997: 188). The work originating from this tradition in cognitive linguistics describes
and interprets the relation between language and cognition conceived of in this manner by its own
set of concepts, some of which I shall now define.
If basic construction units of these analyses were to be determined, these would undoubtedly
be mental spaces, even though such description does not hold without qualification. Mental spaces
are ‘domains of backstage cognition’, mental constructs of potential or fictive realities that are
dynamically set up as we listen to a string of speech, read a text or, in general terms, process a
(piece of) discourse. They are inhabited by ‘partial representations of the entities and relationships
in any given scenario as perceived, imagined, remembered, or otherwise understood by a
conceptualizer’ (Coulson and Pascual 2006: 154). From all this, it is clear that they should be
understood not as integrated, stable and complete reflections of the world, but to the contrary as
horizons of reference which are inherently partial, selective and temporary. Mental spaces remain
open to revisions and modifications in the course of on-line discourse interaction. They contain a
typically small number of elements referring to conceptual entities and are rather minimally
structured by frames and cognitive models (Fauconnier and Turner 1998: 137). Although not
linguistic in nature, language can be used to prompt or activate a particular mental space by means
of ‘space-builders’, i.e. grammatical forms ‘represent[ing] overt indicators that either open up new
mental spaces or shift the focus to some existing ones’ (Pascual 2002: 47).
As already mentioned, the modeling function of mental spaces that warrants their referential
structure is met by frames and cultural models. Here, the notion of frame assumes more precise
meaning than in the fields such as cognitive anthropology, ethnography of speaking or discourse
studies (cf. Tannen 1993), as it denotes patterns of role-value pairs like the family or a conversation
(Pascual 2002: 48). Cultural models are culturally shared frames or knowledge structures that
define how a particular social situation or issue is to be interpreted, experienced and acted upon.
Multiple frames and cultural models can be normally employed to interpret and assess a situation or
an issue, and these may entail radically different consequences for the participants. Such open-
endedness provides space for the distinct argumentative positions to highlight the relevance of this
or that frame in accordance with their respective interests. To conclude, the strategic importance
of framing stems from the fact that it always conditions the referential meaning of elements in a
mental domain to which it was applied.
 3

The process of conceptual integration or conceptual blending is a general and routine cognitive
operation which can be put to a range of different uses. It is enabled by mappings and projections,
playing a basic role in meaning construction. First, elements in different conceptual structurees
(mental spaces and/or frames) are mapped onto each other, then projected onto the blend.
According to Fauconnier and Turner (1998), projections typically involve conceptual blending. The
outcome of the process is a conceptual integration network consisting of the input mental spaces,
the generic space, the blended space and their links. In blending, projections assume the form of
cross-space mappings (also termed ‘counterpart connections’) which connect the elements in two or
more input spaces with their counterparts; these mappings are selective and dynamic.
Simultaneously, mappings are developed between two input spaces and generic space containing
elements that the inputs have in common (Fauconnier and Turner 2000: 288); however, some
students in the field regard the concept of generic space as problematic and possibly redundant
and therefore refrain from its incorporation in analysis. Finally, parts of structures of input mental
spaces are projected into a blended mental space which, importantly, also develops an emergent
structure of its own. It is by of the ‘imaginative processes of blending’, namely, composition,
completion and elaboration, that the emergent structure is derived (Fauconnier and Turner 1998:
144). Composition presupposes the juxtaposition of elements projected from different inputs;
completion comes about when an activation of part of a frame or cognitive model leads to the
activation of the rest of the frame; and lastly, elaboration is an ‘extended version of completion
that results from mental simulation, or various sorts of physical and social interaction with the
world as construed with blended concepts’ (Coulson and Oakley 2006: 48).

In the network, the inputs are typically linked by modicum (environ seventeen) of so-called
‘vital relations’ which, being rooted in human neurobiology, are conceptualized universalistically as
intrinsic to human cognition irrespective of social and cultural constraints. These are for instance
the relations of Cause-Effect, Change, Time, Identity, Intentionality or Representation. Crucially,
‘an outer-space vital relation between inputs can be compressed into an inner-space vital relation
in the blend of the same kind [as well as] of a different kind’ (Fauconnier and Turner 2000: 291, my
emphasis). ‘Compressions’ of this kind are common in blended mental spaces and are central to
human cognition as they usefully help to reduce originally very complex relationships between
cognitive elements onto ‘human scale’ (Fauconnier and Turner 2000, 2002). A differentiation can be
drawn between ‘syncopations’, which delete significant chunks in relations between the inputs and
thus alter the topology of the compressed relations, and ‘scaling’, which involves scaling-down of
inner-space or outer-space intervals (e.g., temporal), but nevertheless preserves their basic
pattern.

Conceptual Blending in Persuasive Discourse

 4

There have been efforts among researchers working within the mental spaces and conceptual
integration framework to explore how these theories could help to explicate linguistic phenomena
and cognitive processes involved in the production and processing of persuasive and argumentative
discourse. Some of the most common examples have been advertisements, especially public
awareness and public service campaigns, and the discourse of law. This is the case with Coulson and
Pascual (2006), who show how unrealistic and often markedly absurd instances of conceptual
blending in ‘pro-life‘ (i.e., anti-abortion and anti-stem cell research) rhetoric and judicial
argumentation may be exploited to influence the audience’s understanding of the issue in question.
From a pragmatic point of view, they argue that ‘the impossible images inherent in these blends are
rhetorically effective because they present the speakers’ argument in an economic and convincing
straightforward manner’ (ibid.: 156). Such argumentation differs from the classical norms of
rhetoric in that it does not proceed by presenting logical and factual premises from which a
recipient should be able to unambiguously conclude for himself. Rather, advantage is taken of the
abovementioned properties of cultural models; producers try to evoke those frames and models
which are strategically convenient for them. If they succeed, this can yield a predictable emotional
or evaluative response on the part of the recipient. The arguing in a blend also commonly involves
the phenomenon of negation, in which a missing entity (that has referential properties, therefore,
is not a non-entity) figures as a fictive entity (e.g., in a fictive scenario or fictive interaction) in a
BLENDED space, deriving its nonexistence from REALITY or BELIEF space and its referential value
from a COUNTERFACTUAL space (Fauconnier and Turner 2002). For instance, aborted foetuses can
be construed as missing babies, children or young adults in ‘pro-life’ advertisements to convey the
message that their possible future lives have been ‘lost’ (Coulson and Pascual 2006: 156-161), and
fictive entities such as an invalid and therefore absent defendant’s alibi can be interpreted by
audience as circumstantial evidence of the defendant’s guilt (Pascual 2002: 67-72). It is important
to note that although the instances of persuasion in a blend often depart from reality in an
extravagant manner, the arguers do not intend to draw attention to the oddity of blends, but rather
to the inferences that arise from them. These blends are in fact constrained by the participants’
understanding and knowledge of: (1) the communicative event; (2) the cognitive task; (3) the issues
dealt with; and (4) the discursive goal (Coulson and Pascual 2006: 176-177). Moreover, the
participants are bound to exploit those metaphors and frames which are shared in the everyday
knowledge of the members of a particular cultural community, such as those known in social
sciences as ‘folk models’ or ‘ethnoscience’. There are also instances of discourse such as humorous
cartoons where, for the sake of entertainment, the focus actually is on the absurdity of the blend.
Nevertheless, even joking can be underpinned by a serious political agenda. This is because the
indirectness and social acceptability of humor render it a very convenient way of commenting on an
otherwise taboo or problematic issue, and if blending succeeds in altering the conceptual structure
of one of the inputs, it can serve to oppose or reinforce particular framings of the issue in public
sphere (Coulson 2001).
The central role of cultural models, alongside ‘the imaginative processes of blending’ defined
above, is also recognized in the analyses of ‘deliberate rhetoric’ in Coulson and Oakley (2006). For
 5

instance, the authors describe a public service advertisement depicting a martini glass which
contains a clear liquid, an olive and a car key instead of the swizzle stick, with the caption reading,
‘Killer Cocktail’. They argue that the message is obvious precisely due to conceptual integration on
the part of the recipient. First of all, the car key as an element from the driving mental space has
been composed with the martini frame so that it fills the role of the swizzle stick. By the process of
completion, the martini frame cued by the advertisement results in the activation of a more
abstract frame for drinking alcohol, and the car key alone is sufficient to activate a frame of
driving. And lastly, the blend is elaborated by mental simulation of the likely tragic effects of drunk
driving. The authors also discuss an e-mail message from Michael Moore to left-wing, third-party
voters, in which he was persuading them to vote for Democrats in 1998 midterm elections in order
to stop Republican policies. Moore attempted to resolve the initial incompatibility of the
addressees’ goals with his own intentions by framing the act of voting as a ‘legal act of civil
disobedience’ and also as ‘sending Congress a message’ to stop the impeachment procedure against
the then U.S. President Bill Clinton. The latter framing is in fact an instance of the well-described
Voting as Speaking blend which involves massive compression in a fictive interaction blend (cf.
Pascual in print). The authors emphasize that the overall tactic of the letter is not to shift reader’s
goals but her mental construction of the act of voting for Democrats, and they conclude that the
letter’s success ‘does not depend on being able to establish the appropriate mappings (for example,
understanding the intended correspondences between personal dialogue and the political process),
but rather on the integration of the models to produce the emergent structure’ (Coulson and Oakley
2006b: 5:10, original emphasis). Bearing these findings in mind, let us now move on to examine our
own data.

1. A coalition agreement as marriage

On the first example (Fig. 1.1) rendered in a rather classic style of political-satirical cartoons,
we see a pair of men, one of whom is dressed as a groom and carries the other one dressed as a
bride. The groom can be identified as Miroslav Grebeníček, in that time the chairman of Communist
Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), and the broom is Jiří Paroubek, the chairman of Czech
Socialist Democratic Party (ČSSD). The caption reads, ‘They told themselves their yes, tell your
NO!”. The bride carries a red rose, which is the symbol of ČSSD, and wears a pair of cherries, the
symbol of KSČM, as an earring.
The present integration network (Fig. 1.2) is remarkably complex as it includes five input spaces,
two frames and multi-level conceptual blending. CZECH POLITICS space has KSČM with Grebeníček
as the chairman, ČSSD with Paroubek as the chairman, the symbols of both parties and also what
I called ‘coalition partners-like behaviour’, which should be regarded as the general knowledge of
 6

Figure 1.1. They told

themselves their yes,
tell your NO!

an average Czech voter about the possible or probable coalition alliances of the major parties. This
for instance includes some notion of the fact that all ‘democratic’ parties, at least rhetorically,
fiercely reject the possibility of working together with largely delegitimized KSČM. However, the
left-wing position of ČSSD in the political spectrum licenses to a certain extent the belief that it is
this party, if any, which is the most likely to cooperate with KSČM. (It is not without interest that
this suspicion, often rhetorically exploited by the opponents of ČSSD, has proven fairly grounded
when after the indecisive result of the 2006 elections ČSSD indeed initiated coalition negotiations
with KSČM.) First, the elements in CZECH POLITICS space are blended with their counterparts in the
well-established and stereotypical structure of Marriage frame, so that in the resultant CZECH
POLITICS AS MARRIAGE blend Paroubek becomes the bride, Grebeníček, the groom, and the ČSSD
party-symbol of rose, the bride’s bouquet. The bride’s and groom’s dresses as well as the utterance
‘yes (I do)’ operate as space-builders for the frame. In the blend, the Paroubek/bride and
rose/bouquet elements both serve as metonymical representations of ČSSD as whole; the same
holds for the Grebeníček/groom elements and the KSČM logo (projected directly from CZECH
POLITICS input, as it lacks an easily recognizable counterpart in Marriage frame) in relation to KSČM
as whole. Paroubek/bride and Grebeníček/groom are then connected in a marital bond, with the
mental contact between the coalition partners-like behavior and “yes” elements enabling the
 7

sentimental relationship of marriage to stand for the coalition alliance of the parties. Another input
space is 2006 CZECH ELECTIONS space which gets integrated with the abovementioned Conversation
frame into VOTING AS SPEAKING blend. Thus, the pre-election coalition agreement of ČSSD and
KSČM, represented as if it already took place, is conceptualized as the first turn in the face-to-face
conversation, in which policies and strategies of the parties’ appeal to voters and to which the act
is voting is a direct verbal response. Here, the utterances ‘yes‘ and ‘no‘ assume the function of
space-builders of an almost textbook-like prototypicality (cf. Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 62,
‘Debate Frame’).

x ČSSD (chairman:

Paroubek)

x KSČM (chairman: x KSČM-ČSSD coalition

Grebeníček) agreement
x cherries – symbol of KSČM

x rose – symbol of ČSSD x the act of voting

x coalition partners-like

behaviour

CZECH POLITICS 2006 CZECH ELECTIONS space

space

x bride x „yes“ -A: Turn a

x groom x bouquet -B: Turn b

Marriage frame Conversation frame

x Paroubek + symbol x Turn a:

> ČSSD parties‘ policies

 8

x Grebeníček + symbol appeal to voters x viewer

> KSČM

x ‘marriage’ of the parties x Turn b:

> their coalition ag. voter responds

CZECH POLITICS AS MARRIAGE VOTING AS SPEAKING HERE AND NOW

blend blend space

Identity link x coalition/marriage

Mappings „yes“

Projections
> Metonymical representation x voter/viewer
„no“

Figure 1.2. BLEND

Now, the VOTING AS SPEAKING blend and CZECH MARRIAGE AS POLITICS blend become inputs for
ithe second-level final BLEND, alongside with the viewer in HERE AND NOW space. These projections
are enabled by mappings between the marriage/coalition alliance element in CZECH POLITICS AS
MARRIAGE blend and the first turn in the VOTING AS SPEAKING blend, and between the second turn
in the latter and the viewer in HERE AND NOW space. The pronoun ‘your’ in the caption and also the
second person of plural imperative grammatical structure of its second clause are space-builders
that both open up HERE AND NOW space with the factive viewer and prompt the voter in VOTING AS
SPEAKING blend who figures as a participant in a fictive conversation with the parties. This is in
some respects comparable with the fictive interactions between multiple Author persons and
factive and fictive Readers in Dante’s Inferno (Stec 2007) in that the present viewer/voter is also a
blend of the fictive voter and factive viewer. Moreover, there are also some crucial presumptions on
the part of the producers of discourse pertaining to this fictive potential voter for ČSSD, such as she
would perceive KSČM as a delegitimized political party and, in turn, the coalition agreement of
ČSSD as KSČM as a good enough reason not to vote for ČSSD. It has been argued in rhetoric that all
arguments rest on such shared presumptions, facts, beliefs and values that have been termed
‘objects of argument’ (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969). In this respect, Coulson and Oakley
 9

(2006: 64) link success of rhetorical efforts to ‘their appeal to social roles and previously
established cultural practices’ of a particular targeted audience, and also to the complacency of
the audience in espousing such appeals. In fact, the very inference which impels the viewer to act
in a particular way can be derived from the final blend only if she is willing to achieve the
conceptual integration of herself as a factive viewer with the fictive voter as pre-construed by the
authors, implying also the acceptance of her unequivocally negative perception of KSČM.

2. Robin Hood robbing the poor

The remaining three examples are all directed against Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the
strongest liberal right-wing party in the Czech Republic. Prior to the 2006 elections, ODS was in
opposition but with good chances of succeeding in the elections; in the present, it is the central
party in a right-wing coalition with Greens and Christian Democrats. On the first billboard (Fig. 2.1.)
we shall discuss, the chairman of ODS, Mirek Topolánek, is depicted dressed in a folk costume and
trimming a valaška (sheephook). There is a broad, winning smile on his face and his posture appears
cheerful, as if he was dancing in a folk celebration. Next to the sheephook, a schematic blue dove
seems to be hanging in the air, almost identical with the symbol of ODS. The main caption reads,
‘To take from the poor, to give to the rich’. Below, the chairman is identified by his full name. In
an orange horizontal strip at the very bottom of the billboard, there is a watchword ‘Vote with right
hand’, a blue tourist-sign arrow pointing to the right, and the party’s name acronym, ‘ODS’.
The billboard exploits the widespread familiarity of the Czech public with the corpus of Slovak
folk-tales on Juraj Jánošík (1688 – 1713), an equivalent of Robin Hood or William Tell. One of
the central properties of this cultural hero is that he was a forest outlaw robbing the rich, mostly
aristocrats, and distributing their assets to the poor. It is the case that even a pupil of primary
school can respond to the question what was Jánošík doing with the idiom, ‘He was taking from the
poor and giving to the rich’. Now, in the conceptual integration network (Fig. 2.3) Topolánek as the
chairman of ODS in ODS space is blended with Jánošík in JÁNOŠÍK FOLK-TALE space which is
prompted by the characteristic dress and sheephook as space-builders. In blend,
 10

Figure 2.1. To take from the poor, to give to the rich /

Ing. Mirek Topolánek / Vote with right hand / ODS

Topolánek/Jánošík represents metonymically the whole ODS. The above cited phrase is inherited
from the JÁNOŠÍK FOLK-TALE in a symetrically inverted form, ‘To take from the poor, to give to the
rich’, and attributed to Topolánek and, by extension, ODS. Even this reformulated version functions
as further space-builder for JÁNOŠÍK FOLK-TALE space. The original catchphrase is an iconic
representation for the whole of Jánošík’s ‘pro-poor’ attitudes and actions, and this is all the more
crucial because the element is anchored in the network by two relations of disanalogy – with the
right-wing political orientations and policies of ODS and Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) in ODS and
ODA spaces, respectively. The political orientation of ODS is also projected onto the inverted phrase
in the blend. One more element in the blend space seems to reinforce the mappings with JÁNOŠÍK
FOLK-TALE space, namely the ODS party logo situated in relation to other elements in such a way
that it vaguely supports the folk-lore impression delivered by the billboard. The remaining elements
in the blend space help to identify the billboard as a parody of the original ODS campaign by setting
up as they are inherited from ODS space in an unmodified form. The billboard preserves the visual
identity of original campaign (cf. Fig. 2.2): the party’s name, the blue arrow and the color scheme
are identical, and there are some surface similarities between the types of font used. The element
‘Vote with your right hand’ is in fact identical with the generally familiar slogan of the 1998
parliamentary election campaign of ODA, by now a marginal liberal right-wing party. The relation of
analogy between the political positions of the two parties allows the makers to use the slogan of the
one to mock the other, and licenses the use of this element to complement the ‘anti-right’ thrust of
the billboard. However, its ultimate goal is not to comment on the Czech right-wing parties in
general, but to influence the viewer’s perception of the political program and future policies of ODS
so that he infers there is an association between them and ‘anti-poor’, ‘pro-rich’ purposes.
 11

Figure 2.2. An original ODS Czech pre-election billboard.

x ODS (chairman: x Jánošík x ‘vote with

Topolánek) his costume right hand‘
x the political orientation
of ODS
x party’s logo x the ‘pro-poor’ catchphrase x the political
> ‘pro-poor‘ actions orientation of ODA
x visual identity
x blue arrow
x party’s name x a ‘folksy bird‘

ODS space JÁNOŠÍK FOLK-TALE space ODA space

x Topolánek > ODS

his costume

x the ‘anti-poor’ catchphrase Identity link

> ‘anti-poor’ policies Mappings
x ‘vote with right hand’ Projections
x elements from ODS space Disanalogy link
> Metonymical
x the bird/symbol representation
Part-Whole
relationship

Figure 2.3. BLEND

 12

3. Swapping plus for a minus

Similarly to the previous case, the third example we shall discuss (Fig. 3.1) also refers in
a remarkably straightforward manner to some other, original campaign. The execution of the
billboard is very simple: the color scheme is dark blue, baby blue and white, and below the main
caption (‘ODS Minus‘) one can read what seems to be a rather unappealing list of policy proposals,
or maybe pre-election promises given by a political party to the voters (translation in Fig. 3.1
caption). The focus is on the financial burden imposed by these hypothetical future policies onto
‘average people‘ – clearly, it is only the richest, if anyone, who will benefit from these measures. In
the bottom right corner of the billboard, there is a blue tourist-sign arrow pointing down which, as
mentioned above, is orientated to the right in the original ODS advertisements. This is sole example
analyzed in this paper whose author‘s identity, ČSSD, has been revealed to the public by the party
itself. ‘ODS Minus‘ advertisements were in fact commonly posted just side by side with ČSSD posters
so as to enable the viewer to compare the purported programs of the two parties.
The major set of blends occurs between elements in ODS PLUS CAMPAIGN space and their
counterparts in OPPONENT IDEOLOGICAL REINTERPRETATIONS space. The billboard in fact reacts to
the sub-set of advertisements which ODS used in the 2006 elections under the headings ‘ODS Plus’
and ‘Plus for Everyone’ (see example in Fig. 3.2). A part of these posters and billboards depicted
individuals or groups representing different professions (a nurse, a worker) or situations in life (a
retiree, a family) and stated exact figures all these people or groups would save on taxes per year if
ODS was to implement the tax reform it proposed. Another set of ODS Plus advertisements again

Figure 3.1. ODS Minus / We will lower the taxes

for the richest / We will raise the prices of
foodstuffs, medicines, water, heating and public
transport /We will abolish free health service /
We will introduce school fees / We will abolish
the minimum wage / We will introduce unjustified
dismissal / We will raise the rents immediately
 13

Figure 3.2. An original ‘ODS Plus‘ billboard. The

figure equals how much a qualified worker with
monthly salary of 18,000 CZK will save on taxes
pay year after the tax reform proposed by ODS.
The text below the figure reads, ‘The modern
tax, pension and social system of ODS brings a
Plus for Everyone.’

depicted similar human prototypes, but this time complemented with captions such as, ‘Plus for
better education’, ‘Plus for justice and your safety’ and the like. Many commentators expressed
their surprise over unexpectedly ‘social touch’ to the campaign which set it apart from previous
ODS communications.
In the conceptual integration network (Fig. 3.3), the blue arrow and the heading ‘ODS Minus’
(alongside with blue as a dominant color) serve as powerful space-builders that open up ODS PLUS
CAMPAIGN space. Across mental spaces, the elements in this space are strikingly disanalogous to
their counterparts in ODS PLUS CAMPAIN space; however, in the blend, they are compatible and
effectively support the overall message of the billboard. At least three elements in the blend are
integrated with their counterparts in OPPONENT IDEOLOGICAL REINTERPRETATIONS space: so for
instance, ODS indeed proposed a reform of health service system, but it would not make much
sense for the party to call the reform an abolishment of free health service. In fact, it was the pre-
election rhetoric of ČSSD that promised to keep healthcare ‘free’ which enraged many rightist
voters stressing that it is obviously not free at all because the payments are subtracted from their
taxes, and it is precisely this element that gets projected from ČSSD CAMPAIGN space into the
 14

blend. As indicated above, the ODS claimed that its tax reform would benefit everyone including
working class, while in the blend the tax reform ends up being something which is profitable only
for ‘the richest’ and includes raising of prices of basic commodities and services. And finally, while
ODS consistently called its property market reform a ‘deregulation’, in the blend this is represented

x ‘ODS Plus’/‘Plus for x interpretation

Everyone‘ of the health
service reform
x blue arrow pointing
to the right x interpretation of the
tax reform

x reform of health service

x reform of tax system x interpretation of the

x reform of property market property market reform

x other items in the

campaign

x blue

ODS PLUS CAMPAIGN space OPPONENT IDEOLOGICAL REINTERPRETATIONS space

x reactions of flat
owners and municipalities
to the property market
x ‘free health service’ reform

x reactions of free
market to the tax reform

x ‘ODS Minus’
ČSSD CAMPAIGN space EXPECTED POST-REFORM
x blue arrow pointing down REALITY space

x abolishment of free health

service
x tax reform in favour of
the richest + raising prices
x raising the rents Identity link
x other items in the Projections
campaign Mappings
x blue

Figure 3.3. BLEND

 15

as ‘raising the rents’. Although the formulations of other items of the political program of ODS do
not differ from their original counterparts so remarkably, their recontextualization in the blend
space radically alters their meaning (cf. Fairclough 1995: 41).
There are also two cause and effect blends, namely of the elements ‘property market reform’
and ‘tax system reform’ in ODS PLUS CAMPAIGN space with their counterparts in EXPECTED POST-
REFORM REALITY space. Such blends unite cause and effect in human understanding and enable one
‘to see potential effects in a cause, and (...) to see potential causes in an effect’ (Fauconnier and
Turner 2002: 76). They typically involve massive compressions of the mediations in long chains of
stimuli and responses. Here, the act of legal deregulation of the prices on property market (the
cause) is presented as if it contained the direct effect of the flat owners and municipalities (for it is
they who own and manage the stock of flat, not the Czech state) actually raising the rents.
Similarly, the act of reforming tax system (the cause) is presented as if it, under liberal capitalism,
could directly entail the rise in prices in free markets with commodities and services (the effect).
Alongside the blends with the elements in OPPONENT IDEOLOGICAL REPRESENTATIONS space, these
cause and effect blends help the main inference of the billboard to come across: namely, that ODS
is an ‘anti-social’ party and that voting for it will certainly not bring you any pluses, unless you
consider yourself one of ‘the richest’.

4. Bringing litter and drugs straight to your village

On the billboard which is our last example (Fig. 4.1), a not so old man and woman, the man’s
left arm placed on the woman’s shoulder, smile broadly and optimistically, gazing and pointing
towards the viewer whom they apparently address. The duo is Ivan Langer and Miroslava Němcová,
prominent and well-known members of ODS. A round callout is attributed to each, so that Langer is
made to pronounce, ‘We love TechnoParties’, and Němcová promises, ‘We will arrange a
TechnoParty in your municipality too’. To their left, there is a tourist guidepost-cum-menu, which
lists some four drugs (marijuana, hashish, ecstasy, and LSD) purportedly on offer at the CzechTech
party (see below), and also states, quite realistically, their prices. Finally, in the bottom left corner
of the billboard, a schematic blue vulture refers to the symbol of ODS, and the capital first letters
in the watchcry Odpadky a Drogy Smrdí (‘Litter and Drugs Stink’) give the acronym of party’s name
(ODS). This wordplay is further emphasized by the contrastive blue color of the first letters.
For adequate contextualization of the billboard, it is important to know that CzechTech is the
biggest annual open-air ‘rave’ or ‘freetekk’ party in the Czech Republic, and also the one most
prominently featured in the media. Therefore in RAVE PARTY input space, it can be seen as
representing the phenomenon of rave parties and lifestyle as such. It is organized and frequented,
 16

Figure 4.1. CzechTech

Menu: Marijuana 1 g... 250,-
Hashish 1g... 300,-
Ecstasy... 150,-
LSD... 200,- / We love
TechnoParties / We will
arrange a TechnoParty in
your municipality too /
Litter and Drugs Stink

x CzechTech 2006 x the CzechTech

> rave sub-culture ‘drug menu’

x Langer and Němcová

RAVE PARTY space > ODS

attribution
x ODS critique of x enthusiasm for
the repression rave sub-culture

x a double-reference to

x ODS party’s name + logo

x its logo and and CzechTech

its name

ODS space x viewer

x ‘Litter and

Drugs Stink‘ x viewer BLEND

x interpretation of
critique Projections
Identity link
OPPONENT space HERE AND NOW space > Metonymy
Part-Whole
relationship
Figure 4.2. In-space interactions
 17

alongside more ‘mainstream’ youngsters, by members of the ‘rave’ or ‘freetekk’ subculture (in
Czech, teknaři), some of which claim the right to organize a community-based, non-commercial
party on an unused land, even if it was a private property. In the general commonsensical
knowledge (here, we are not concerned with existence or absence of the objective grounds for such
beliefs), such parties are strongly associated with illicit drug use and the nuisance that typically
arises to ‘ordinary citizens’ from excessive noise and heaps of garbage left on the spot. In this
respect, the subculture’s public image is comparable with the one of its equivalents in the United
Kingdom and Western Europe. Now, in 2006 the organizers claimed they have formally rented the
piece of land where the party took place. However, shortly following the party’s opening and with
the direct approval of the then socialist-democratic Minister of Interior, heavily armed police
officers including special-purpose units intervened and put an end to the party, severely battering
some of the young people and arresting many more. The incident stirred an intensive debate in
Czech society and media, and the representatives of ODS, in conjunction with many other
politicians, intellectuals and public figures, have castigated the intervention as unjustified and
excessive abuse of police force. Powerful analogies have been drawn between the actions of the
government led by Socialist Democrats (commonly conceptualized by their opponents, including
ODS, as ‘bolsheviks’) and the beatings of student protesters in socialist Czechoslovakia.

In the conceptual integration network activated by the advertisement (Fig. 4.2), the original
critique formulated by ODS in ODS space is blended with its ideological reinterpretation in the
OPPONENT space so that it comes across as uncritical and euphoric enthusiasm for the rave
lifestyle. This is in turn attributed to Langer and Němcová, metonymically representing ODS as a
whole. The properties of the CzechTech party (and, by extension, rave subculture as such) that are
central to the argumentative point are projected onto the ‘drug menu’ element in BLENDED space,
and also onto the ‘Litter and Drugs Stink’ element. The latter is in fact an instance of a very
complex and multi-layer conceptual integration, because there are simultaneous cross-space
mappings with the party’s name and symbol in ODS space, and with the voice of the opponents of
CzechTech and the criticisms of the intervention in OPPONENT space. The vulture element accesses
the structure of ODS space and is compatible with the argued stench of drugs and litter inherited
from the opponents’ voice. Lastly, the viewer in the blend and the viewer in HERE AND NOW space
are connected by an identity relation. Similarly to the first analyzed example, there is a fictive
interaction blend activated by the pronoun ‘your’ in one of the callouts, and also by what Stec
(2007: 41) calls ‘addressee-directed eyegaze’ and gestures of the politicians. Fictive interaction is
therefore prompted by multimodal, both textual and pictorial, means. This is naturally very
convenient for the authors for two reasons: it helps to situate the billboard’s inference right in the
viewer’s immediate life-world, thus enabling mental simulation of all the unpleasant implications;
and it presents the CzechTech debate not as a dispute on an abstract, ideological matter, but as
something very mundane and, if the position advocated by ODS was to prevail, potentially
threatening the comfort and private property of ‘ordinary citizens’, similarly pre-construed by the
authors as in example 3. It could be also argued that Langer and Němcová have been chosen to
 18

represent ODS because their youthful, ‘nonconformist’ appearance makes the attribution more
believable and convincing.

Conclusions

The analysis of the four examples has shown that the cognitive operation of conceptual
integration was a prerequisite for a) understanding the billboards’ message, and b) the construction
of that meaning as argumentatively effective and therefore convincingly suggesting some action (or
non-action, for that matter) on the part of the recipient. The means for opening up particular input
spaces were often conspicuously minimal, but arguably still sufficiently effective because they
targeted the very core of cultural and everyday knowledge of the Czech public. All of the examples
thus can be seen as attempts to make use of the processes of blending to modify the conceptual
structures of input spaces in which original campaigns or political rhetoric of the opponent parties
were embedded. While the second and third example connect quite straightforwardly with the
‘Poison Parasite Defense’ strategy discussed in the introduction as they recontextualize elements of
original campaigns, the first and last example react rather to properties of political programs and
declarations of the opponent parties. The analyses also revealed some striking similarities between
the examples. For instance, there seems to be a clear need to mentally access an input space
containing some properties of original campaign or political program of the parties, and this has
been invariably done either by using a) the parties’ symbols, names and acronyms (identical with
the original or modified), b) the photographs of chairmen (or, less often, prominent members), or c)
the combination of both strategies. Especially the common exploitation of the chairmen as the
‘public faces’ of parties shows the extent to which these persons can metonymically stand for the
party as a whole, including its policies, rhetoric, position in the political field etc. In two billboards,
fictive interaction blends could also be identified which served the purpose of connecting the
argumentative point with the viewer’s experience, and challenging her to take certain actions.
 19

REFERENCES

Cialdini, Robert B.; Petrova, Petia K.; Demaine, Linda J.; Barrett, Daniel W.; Sagarin, Brad J.;
Rhoads, Kelton L. and J. Maner, (in print) ‘The Poison Parasite Defense: A Strategy for
Sapping a Stronger Opponent’s Persuasive Strength’. Preparing for invited resubmission. In:
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Coulson, Seana (2001) ‘What's so funny: Conceptual Blending in Humorous Examples‘. In: The
Poetics of Cognition: Studies of Cognitive Linguistics and the Verbal Arts. Herman, V. (ed.).
Cambridge University Press.

Coulson, Seana and T. Oakley (2006) ‘Purple persuasion: Deliberative rhetoric and conceptual
bleding’. In: Cognitive Linguistics Investigations. Luchjenbroers, J. (ed.).
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamis.

Coulson, Seana and T. Oakley (2006b) ‘Purple persuasion: Deliberative rhetoric and conceptual
bleding’. Working version. In: Cognitive Linguistics Investigations. Luchjenbroers, J. (ed.).
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamis.

Coulson, Seana and E. Pascual (2006) ‘For the sake of argument: Mourning the unborn and reviving
the dead through conceptual blending’. In: Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, Vol. 4:
153-181.

Fairclough, Norman (1995) Media Discourse. London: Hodder Arnold.

Fauconnier, Gilles (1997) Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
 20

Fauconnier, Gilles and M. Turner (1998) ‘Conceptual Integration Networks’. In: Cognitive Science,
Vol. 22, No. 1: 133-187.

Fauconnier, Gilles and M. Turner (2000) ‘Compression and global insight’. In: Cognitive Linguistics,
Vol. 11, No. 3/4: 283–304.

Fauconnier, Gilles and M. Turner (2002) The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s
Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.

Kress, Gunther; Leite-García, Regina and T. van Leeuwen (1997) ‘Discourse Semiotics’. In: Discourse
as Structure and Process. Discourse Studies: a Multidisciplinary Introduction, Vol. 1. Dijk, T.
A. van (ed.). Sage Publications.

Pascual, Esther (2002) Imaginary Trialogues: Conceptual Blending and Fictive Interaction in
Criminal Courts. Utrecht: LOT.

Pascual, Esther (in print) ‘Fictive interaction blends in everyday life and courtroom settings’. To
appear in: Mental Spaces Approaches to Discourse and Interaction. Hougaard, A. and T.
Oakley (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Perelman, Chaim and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation.
Notre Dame / London: University of Notre Dame Press.

Stec, Kashmiri (2007) Wait ‘till You Hear the Best Part: Fictive Interaction in Narrative.
Undergradute Honor’s Thesis. University of California at Berkeley.

Tannen, Deborah (1993) ‘What’s in a Frame? Surface Evidence for Underlying Expectations’. In:
Framing in Discourse. Tannen, D. (ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.