A Show About Nothing Essays - Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer, The Apartment

A Show About Nothing Essays - Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer, The Apartment A Show About Nothing A Show About Nothing In the artcle, Is Seinfeld the Best Comedy Ever?, author Jay McInerney agrees with Seinfeld the best comedy on television. Seinfeld is a real life show. The behaviors of Jerry, Kramer, George and Elaine, the failed communication, and the everyday embassassment represent nothingness but a peculiar everyday life. These nothingnesses happen to all of us, but when it is put on TV, people will laugh at these. Besides, the author appreciates the fact that Seinfeld is a New York story but it is filmed in Los Angeles. The lumpy texture of life in the city, the random looniness of the street, the idioms and speech inflections of Manhattan, and the claustrophobia of New York apartment living in the show fascinates the New Yorker as it is so real and funny. Seinfeld takes those little nothings and combines them to create something realistic. Nothingness and reality give the author the reasons to believe that it is the best comedy ever. When people consider Seinfeld as a show about nothing. It could be humorous that nothingness can provide such an interesting topic for the comedies of life. In life people care about details and worry about trouble, the little nothings made are soon forgotten. Thus, these nothingnesses are actually fragments of out real life. Seinfeld gathers the nothingness into a show, and it spreads out the idea that everything in the show that actually happens all around us. For example, losing the car in a parking garage, working for an eccentric boss and coping with the trials and tribulations of dating, it is common for a lot of people. And these realities come into the nothingness of Seinfeld. In Seinfeld, the fabulous four characters George, Kramer, Elaine and Jerry share the nothingnesses which life have granted them. George cannot attract thr girl because of his limitiations as a short, bald, fat man. Kramer struggles with the fact that he has not achieved anything in his life yet.. Elaine worries her hold on to a good boyfriend and a good job for long. And Jerry, living with his nothing friends, as well as his own LEX Luthurs which seem to always abstract his plans to find his own Lois Lane and live the life of Superman. The four were cramped in small apartments of New York and live a life of nothingness. Besides, even the settings in Seinfeld for great adventures appear muchlike nothing. Seinfeld always takes place in Jerrys apartment. Jerry fears germs greatly so he keeps a neat apartment. From the apartment the four plan trips to the movies or coffee shops. The coffee shop is a place where Elaine, George, and Jerry converse. The movie house is a place where Jerry, George, and Elaine often go to watch movies together or bring dates. Jerry gets caught making out during Shindlers List. Elaine gets caught not like the English Patient. They always get into trouble at the movie theater. The settings of Seinfeld are simple in design, telling people that they are living in a common way. In conclusion, I agree with the description that Seinfeld is a show about nothing. However, the nothingness in the show actually represent reality. That is, Seinfels is a show about reality. George, Kramer, Elaine, and Jerry are not stereotyped, they have unique characters and they just represent the way that they live. The settings are simple and make people more easily to get connected with them. And the plot, it is about fragments of lives. It is a show about reality that it may happen around us. Seinfeld creates an identity that watching nothing can present laughter and humor to everyone. Besides, the gift of nothingness has transformed the lives of millions around the world.

Definition and Examples of Conceptual Blending

Definition and Examples of Conceptual Blending Conceptual blending refers to a set of cognitive operations for combining (or blending) words, images, and ideas in a network of mental spaces to create meaning. The theory of conceptual blending was brought to prominence by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner in The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Minds Hidden Complexities (Basic Books, 2002). Fauconnier and Turner define conceptual blending as a deep cognitive activity that makes new meanings out of old. Examples and Observations Conceptual Blending Theory assumes that meaning construction involves the selective integration or blending of conceptual elements and employs the theoretical construct of conceptual integration networks to account for this process. For example, the process of understanding the sentence In the end, VHS delivered a knock-out punch to Betamax would involve a basic network consisting of four mental spaces . . .. This includes two input spaces (one relating to boxing and another to the competition between rival video formats in the 1970s and 1980s). A generic space represents what is common to the two input spaces. Elements from the input spaces are mapped to each other and projected selectively into the blended space, to derive an integrated conceptualization where the video formats are seen as being engaged in a boxing match, which VHS eventually wins.Blending Theory can be seen as a development of Mental Space Theory, and it is also influenced by Conceptual Metaphor Theory. However, u nlike the latter, Blending Theory focuses specifically on the dynamic construction of meaning.(M. Lynne Murphy and Anu Koskela, Key Terms in Semantics. Continuum, 2010) To monitor public opinion, and to sway it, Time Warner had, in November, launched a campaign called Roll Over or Get Tough, which asked customers to visit a Web site of the same name and vote on whether Time Warner should give in to their demand for massive price increases or keep holding the line. Eight hundred thousand people had done so. (Ninety-five percent of them thought that Time Warner should Get Tough.)Mark Turner, a professor of cognitive science at Case Western Reserve, explained that Time Warner’s use of the forced-choice device was wise from the standpoint of behavioral economics. In order to make choices, people need their options narrowed in advance.Turner saw other cognitive precepts at work in the Roll Over campaign. He explained, The purpose of the ad is to try to get you off your duff and realize, Hey, the situation around me is changing, and I better take action. And the campaign’s militaristic echoes, You’re either with us or against us, inco rporated, Turner said, a technique called blending, in which a rhetorician exploits what is already in people’s minds. Everybody’s got terrorism on the brain, so if you can have a little hint of that issue in your advertising about cable service: great!, he said.(Lauren Collins, King Kong vs. Godzilla. The New Yorker, January 11, 2010) [B]lending theory can address the meaning of construction in metaphorical expressions that do not employ conventionalized mapping schemes. For example, the italicized portion of this excerpt from an interview with philosopher Daniel Dennet involves a metaphorical blend, Theres not a thing thats magical about the computer. One of the most brilliant things about a computer is that theres nothing up its sleeve, (Edge 94, November 19, 2001). The input domains here are Computers and Magicians, and the blend involves a hybrid model in which the computer is a magician. However, the connection between these two domains arises purely from the context of this example, as there is no conventional COMPUTERS ARE MAGICIANS mapping in English.(Seana Coulson, Conceptual Blending in Thought, Rhetoric, and Ideology. Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications And Future Perspectives, ed. by Gitte Kristiansen, Michel Achard, Renà © Dirven, and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibà ±ez. Mouton de Gruyter, 2006) Blending Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory Similarly to conceptual metaphor theory, blending theory elucidates structural and regular principles of human cognition as well as pragmatic phenomena. However, there are also some noteworthy differences between the two theories. While blending theory has always been more oriented toward real-life examples, conceptual metaphor theory had to come of age before it was put to the test with data-driven approaches. A further difference between the two theories is that blending theory focuses more on the decoding of creative examples, whereas conceptual metaphor theory is well known for its interest in conventional examples and mappings, i.e. in what is stored in peoples minds. But again, the difference is one of degree and not an absolute one. Blending processes can be routinized and stored if their outcome proves to be useful on more than one occasion. And conceptual metaphor theory is able to explain and accommodate novel figurative linguistic expressions as long as they are compatible with the more general metaphorical makeup of the human mind. Another, perhaps somewhat less important difference lies in the fact that while from the start conceptual blending has pointed to the importance of metonymic construals and thinking for cognitive processes, the conceptual metaphor paradigm has long underestimated the role of metonymy.(Sandra Handl and Hans-Jà ¶rg Schmid, Introduction. Windows to the Mind: Metaphor, Metonymy, and Conceptual Blending. Mouton de Gruyter, 2011)