Publications
Most downloads are available at Mark Turner's SSRN author page.
مدخل في نظريّة المزج
(Elements of Blending. In Arabic. Translator: Lazhar Zanned.) Download.
This book, in preparation, presents lectures delivered by Mark Turner at the University of Manouba, Tunisia, during November, 2010, translated into Arabic by Professor Lazhar Zanned. Introduction: Origins and Goals of Blending Theory. Part One: Introduction to Blending. Part Two: Blending and Language.
(Ten Lectures on Mind and Language.) 2011. Eminent Linguists Lecture Series. Beijing: FLTR Press. Available from Amazon.com.
This volume presents transcripts of ten lectures delivered in English at six Beijing universities during May, 2009. Each lecture is preceded by a summary in Mandarin written by Li Fuyin, Professor of Linguistics, Beihang University. The book is packaged with a DVD of the lectures.
Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose. 2011. By Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner. Second edition. Princeton University Press. [First edition 1994.] Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises, 1996, from the Académie française. Princeton University Press site. Amazon site. Kindle edition.
"The finest book in ages on the neglected subject of
rhetoric." —David Skinner, editor, Humanities, The Magazine
of the National Endowment of the Humanities
"For the mature student, this is indeed a classic. For the connoisseur,
it is indispensable." — Boston Book Review
"Clear and Simple is an island of elegance." — The
Editorial Eye.
"Every once in a while a book comes along with the power to alter permanently the view of a subject you thought you knew well. For me this year, that book is Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose." — Denis Dutton, Philosophy and Literature
Meaning, Form, and Body. 2010. Edited and with a preface by Fey Parrill, Vera Tobin, and Mark Turner. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Distributed by the University of Chicago Press. Download the preface.
Both cognitive and functional (or usage-based) approaches share the assumption that language happens within a social and conceptual context, and that grammar is motivated by use. Cognitive approaches force us to confront the fact that language is part of general cognition, while usage-based approaches keep us grounded in the real phenomena of language. Bringing the two approaches together has resulted in powerful demonstrations of the value of taking real language data and building towards a theoretical framework that has explanatory power (witness the success of construction grammar).
The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity. Edited by Mark Turner. With an introduction and a chapter by Mark Turner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Kindle edition. Google eBook edition.
All normal human beings alive in the last fifty thousand years appear to have possessed irrepressibly artful minds. Cognitively modern minds produced a staggering list of behavioral singularities—science, religion, mathematics, language, advanced tool use, decorative dress, dance, culture, art—that seems to indicate a mysterious and unexplained discontinuity between us and all other living things. This brute fact gives rise to some tantalizing questions: How did the artful mind emerge? What are the basic mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? These are the questions that occupy the fourteen contributors to this volume, which emerged from a year-long Getty-funded research project hosted by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. These scholars bring to bear a range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives on the relationship between art (broadly conceived), the mind, and the brain. They offer directions for a new field of research that can play a significant role in answering the great riddle of human singularity.
The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. 2002. By Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. Basic Books. Kindle edition. Reviewed in The Atlantic Monthly, December 2002.
"The definitive introduction to conceptual blending by the two architects of the theory. Highly accessible." — Vyv Evans.
"The Way We Think is a dazzling tour of the complexities of human imagination." — George Lakoff.
During the Upper Paleolithic, human beings developed an unprecedented ability to innovate. They acquired a modern human imagination, which gave them the ability to invent new concepts and to assemble new and dynamic mental patterns. The results of this change were awesome: human beings developed art, science, religion, culture, refined tool use, and language. Our ancestors gained this superiority through the evolution of the mental capacity for conceptual blending. Conceptual blending has a fascinating dynamics and a crucial role in how we think and live. It operates largely behind the scenes. Almost invisibly to consciousness, it choreographs vast networks of conceptual meaning, yielding cognitive products, which, at the conscious level, appear simple. Blending is a process of conceptual mapping and integration that pervades human thought. A mental space is a small conceptual packet assembled for purposes of thought and action. A mental space network connects an array of mental spaces. A conceptual integration network is a mental space network that contains one or more "blended mental spaces." A blended mental space is an integrated space that receives input projections from other mental spaces in the network and develops emergent structure not available from the inputs. Blending operates under a set of constitutive principles and a set of governing principles. The theory of conceptual blending has been applied in cognitive neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, music theory, poetics, mathematics, divinity, semiotics, theory of art, psychotherapy, artificial intelligence, political science, discourse analysis, philosophy, anthropology, and the study of gesture and of material culture.
The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language. Oxford University Press, 1996. Reviewed in Discover Magazine, March 1997. Google eBooks edition. Kindle edition.
"Written in a crystal-clear style, Turner's book is a triumph of objective literary studies and an example of intelligence, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage." — Modern Philology.
"A book which intends to transform our whole outlook not so much on literature, but on how we think. Turner argues his case with brilliance and tenacity. I for one am convinced." — Denis Dutton, Philosophy and Literature.
"A provocative and stimulating book, a pioneering achievement, nothing short of revolutionary." — General Semiotics.
Named an Outstanding Academic Book of 1997 by Choice.
The modern mind derives from our remarkable capacity to deploy a cohort of basic mental operations—story, projection, blending, and parable. Evolutionarily and developmentally, this mental cohort precedes the human singularities we know as language, art, music, mathematical and scientific discovery, religion, advanced social cognition, refined tool use, advanced music and dance, fashions of dress, and sign systems. This mental cohort makes our higher-order human behaviors possible.
Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science: The Way We Think About Politics, Economics, Law, and Society. Oxford University Press. 2001. Download Chapter Three, "Choice" . Google eBooks edition. Kindle edition.
"A major frontier of the social sciences is to integrate cognitive science with social science. Mark Turner's pioneering study is an imaginative contribution which will, I believe, force social scientists to turn their attention to this frontier." — Douglass C. North, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Economic Science
Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science. Princeton University Press, 1991.
"[A] brilliant exploration . . . [A] very close
and convincing argument. . . Turner's work must be highly recommended.
[A] welcome antidote to today's fad of theorizing for theory's sake.
. . . What Turner has achieved is important to the study of literature.
Indeed, on the present North American scene it seems to be one of the
most promising approaches." — Jørgen Dines Johansen. The Semiotic Review of Books
"A solid and original investigation into the theoretical underpinnings
of the sciences humaines and an example of a truly interdisciplinary
study." —Donald Bruce, Literary Research/ Recherche littéraire
"To those in the profession of literary studies, no task could
be more urgent. Works such as [this] form the vanguard of our understanding;
from the research front, they signal the presence of new and more fruitful
relationships between the sciences and rhetorical and literary studies."
— Alan Gross, College English
More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. 1989. By George Lakoff and Mark Turner. University of Chicago Press.
"Likely to be the standard work in metaphor for some
time to come." — Donald Freeman, Poetics Today
Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism. 1987. University of Chicago Press. Cybereditions eBook or Paperback.
"A study that is exhaustive, richly documented,
finely articulated, and extraordinarily broad in the range of knowledge
and literary examples that it brings to bear." — Donald Freeman, Poetics Today.
Figurative Language and Thought. 1998. By Cristina Cacciari, Ray Gibbs, Jr., Albert Katz, and Mark Turner. Oxford University Press. [A volume in the series Counterpoints: Cognition, Memory, and Language.] Download.
Amalgami: Introduzione ai Network di integrazione concettuale. 2001. By Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. A cura di Casonato M., Carcione A.,& Procacci M .Urbino: Quattroventi. [A volume in the series Neuroscienze cognitive e psicoterapia.]
