Bringing Meaning to Constructivism: The Role of Conceptual Blending.

Constructivists came to the forefront of international relations theory with Alexander Wendt who attacked the heterodoxy of the structure-agency positions and established a core sense of ideas, establishing a strong role for the discursive formation that agents use to form and be trapped within the world, but suggesting that an independent material world existed outside of the ideas of agents. Some theorists followed Wendt, establishing the rational attachment to a materialist world; others maintained the line Wendt wanted to overcome, that the world was constructed of ideas all the way down. Though writing much about ideas, constructivists say very little about meaning (in that sense very little about ideas). Noticing this shortfall, constructivists reconstituted meaning through different socio-psychological epistemologies, such as social learning, Weberian interactionism, salience psychology, internal state constituencies, and framing. They also ported over techniques through literary theory, suggesting the role of dominant narratives through the role of deconstruction and metaphor identification-implication. In spite of their best efforts, constructivists still say very little about meaning. Using the latest cognitive linguistic literature, I suggest the role for conceptual blending within a constructivist project. I answer two basic questions: How can meaning help constructivism; how can conceptual blending establish this aid? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]