This
paper aims to get a clear picture of how the Conceptual Blending Theory has been initiated, how it has evolved, what it is concerned with, how it has been studied and applied in China, what contributions it has made and what it has problems with. Based on the investigation of the cognitive
mechanisms involved in the
humor interpretation, the paper finds that the "four-space" model developed in the theory fails to give a full account of the on-line cognitive mechanisms present in humor understanding, since the realization of the humorous effect is not based on similarities, instead, it is often triggered by space clash. It is also observed that the
mental mechanisms present in
metaphor reading, to a certain degree, cannot go without such a
mechanism as space clash. Therefore, the paper holds that if we want to have a good understanding of mental mechanisms involved in humor interpretation as well as metaphor interpretation, we need to pay close attention to the triggering mechanism-space clash.
More summaries about the The Research and Application of Conceptual Blending Theory: Retrospection and Reflection