AMBIGUITY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF MENTAL SPACE THEORY AND FRAME SEMANTICS IN WHATSAPP MESSAGES

Abstract

This paper has as its research problem the fact that although many scholars present different approaches to the concept of ambiguity in their works, among those that were found, few – if any – studies are based on more current theoretical frameworks such as those of Cognitive Linguistics; a fact we consider to be relevant, as research in this field has made significant advances. Within this context, the general objective of this study is to refine the concept of ambiguity by considering, in addition to grammatical aspects, the mental spaces theory (MST). To this end, we investigate how meaning is constructed in WhatsApp messages that contain ambiguous stickers, based on the theories of mental spaces by Fauconnier (1994 and 1997), conceptual blending by Fauconnier and Turner (2002), and frame semantics by Fillmore (1976, 1982, and 1985). The analysis, based on WhatsApp messages, explains how double meanings are constructed, highlighting the specific blending processes involved in building the ambiguous meaning of the messages.