Using Conceptual Blending Theory allows to grasp the mechanism of meaning construction trough clothing also thanks to the notion of compression that helps ←48 | 49→bring abstract phenomenon and concepts to a human scale. Compressions allow to achieve human scale by (a) compressing what is diffuse, (b) going from Many to One, (c) obtaining global insights, (d) strengthening vital relations, (e) coming up with a story. It is also compression that initiates metaphor. In a process of communication through dress, it appears that abstract concepts, or frames are either mapped onto clothing (Conceptual Metaphor Theory) or if there are more than one input space these are seen to be interconnected (blended) giving rise to a new blended space in which a specific attire embodies some abstract concepts such as hierarchy, status, gender, cultural values. Likewise, it is the notion of compression which allows viewers to make sense of several media representations of a person or phenomenon. And so, it is due to compression that one may interpret a cartoon representation of a suffragette as Mrs Arson to be standing for all the suffragettes, or in another cartoon (discussed at length in Chapter 3) the series of drawing of differently looking women as an evolution of a suffragette’s face. In all the examined in the book instances when 20th-century female fashion seemed to relate to social changes regarding the position of women in British society, the connection between specific sartorial practices and the meaning of attire or garments becomes apparent with the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory or Conceptual Blending Theory. What justifies the examination of how dress styles were turned into blends or metaphors, which effectively communicated novel ideas about femininity is the relative importance attached to clothing by suffragettes, feminists or female political figures. Therefore, it seems essential to examine not only the visual representation of female sartorial practices but also all those written accounts that testify to the relevance of clothes for female identities, which can be found in suffragettes’ and feminists’ magazines and women’s biographies and autobiographies.
The meanings as produced by and inferred from clothing seem to be related to what the blending theory terms “vital relations” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002). These are “conceptual relations” which predominate in the cognitive processes of blending and compression and which include “Change, Identity, Time, Space, Cause-Effect, Part-Whole, Representation, Role, Analogy, Disanalogy, Property, Similarity, Category, Intentionality, Uniqueness” (101). As in the current study, photographs are examined to comment on the connection between clothes and femininity the relations of identity and representation seem to be particularly important. Giving an example of a painting of the queen, the authors note that “the representation link between the thing represented and the thing representing it is typically compressed into uniqueness” (97). Similarly, Fauconnier and Turner argue that the photograph of a person’s face becomes meaningful through “an automatic blending network in which a person is linked ←49 | 50→to her body” based on a “neurobiological fact” that “there is a systematic one-to-one mapping between bodies and faces” (97–98). Clothing, which is linked to the body seems involved in such vital relations as Part-Whole (e.g. advertisement for a white blouse that connotes suffragettes and their specific dress code), Cause-Effect (as in the cartoon which depicts the effects of being a suffragette on sartorial practices of a young woman, who gradually becomes less attractive), or Identity, “a powerful and supple instrument for creating and disintegrating identity” (95), which allows to conceptually combine several images of the same person (as in the collection of photographs in Boothroyd’s autobiography).
According to Joseph Grady, “Blending theory does acknowledge metaphors as a particular kind of conceptualization, and refers explicitly to ‘metaphoric counterpart connections’ ” (Grady 1595–1614). While blending theory has been described as a “theory of online meaning construction” (Coulson and Oakley, 2000: 175), and “blenders” have tended to focus attention on the (theoretically) real-time processes which allow a particular conceptualisation to arise and to be comprehensible, the theory explicitly acknowledges the role of stored patterns as necessary materials for conceptual integration (Grady 1598). The above fragment conveys how meanings are constructed and conveyed by clothing. While individual garments produce specific “conceptualizations”, through reference to these “stored patterns” of styles past and present, which are endlessly used and re-used in visual culture texts from works of art to advertising, a viewer is capable of “conceptual integration”. Following Lakoff and Johnson, Grady observes that the meaning of primary metaphors relies on “experiential correlation” (1600), and that their connection to physical experience makes primary metaphors a universal and “cross-linguistic” (1600) phenomenon. He expands earlier theories of conceptual metaphors by trying to systematize cognitive processes which allow for such correlations. Among those underlying most of primary metaphors such as MORE IS UP, Grady lists “causation” and “instantation (…) Generic is Specific” (1601). Using causation as the underlying relation when interpreting the metaphorical meaning of clothing might help explain why, for example, clothes that are covering most of the body parts are in many cultures viewed as modest and respectful, while their wearers might occasionally be regarded as reserved. In contrast, garments that are more revealing (in cultures which allow them) tend to connote openness and readiness for relationships – more clothing causes the sense of greater barrier between the wearer and the viewer (the surrounding). Obviously such a reading of attire would not be possible without reference to the above-mentioned notion of “stored patterns” of styles, thanks to which the viewer is also aware of contexts in which skimpy dress might be worn – for example holiday resort, and can produce more correlations ←50 | 51→for example playfulness, gaiety, frivolity, linking them conceptually with leisure activities. These in turn might be mapped onto the wearer’s personality. Consequently, in Western cultures, in many contexts more clothing connotes seriousness and a serious-minded person. In recognition of such metaphorical meaning of attire, the grander the occasion the more items of clothing are required, which is currently most evident in formal menswear, demanding layers of clothes to be worn even in hot weather. Such practice can also be found in corporate women’s dress codes, which usually require that women wear tights regardless of the weather. As transparent tights are usually acceptable, the garment seems to be but a metaphor of a piece of clothing that “covers” and there seems to be a causation relation between the act of wearing such tights and a projected concept of a covered body equalling respectful body.
Dress as a conceptual, non-linguistic metaphor seems to reflect social divisions, with different social groups expressing such meanings as elegance, through different sartorial arrangements, “we should expect metaphors, both of the conceptual and of the linguistic kind, to vary according to these social divisions” (Kövecses 2005, 88). While, as Kövecses observes, linguistic metaphors reflect gender, regional and class divisions, the same can be said about dress. For example, members of different social classes will use different clothing to metaphorically indicate their class affiliation, or levels of formality. Although such differences are economically based, they are also indicative of specific tastes into which the group members are socialised (McRobbie 1998, 12). Moreover, like in linguistic metaphors, also in sartorial metaphors, gender differences are variously expressed across social classes, with the lower classes having a stronger tendency to sartorially accentuate gender through styles that enhance sexuality, for example low cut tops, tight-fitted clothing (McRobbie 1998, 28).
Referring to George Lakoff (1993), Kövecses presents examples of metaphors that are found outside language and calls them “non-linguistic realisations of conceptual metaphors” (Kövecses and Benczes, 2010,