Representing Space and Movement in Digital Discourse

This chapter illustrates how digital environments are perceived as real spaces and affect the way of mapping new meanings and concepts onto the Internet domain. This is full of figurative expressions and of motion and spatialisation metaphors. Expressions like "the PC drive card" or “users can enter into a programme” entail cognitive models related to MOTION and SPACE metaphors, conceptually integrated, and mapped onto language. These metaphorical extensions are necessary for users in order to interact with new practices which have been emerging in response to technical innovations but also to social and cultural change. The aim of this study is to endorse the recourse to Blending Theory in order to investigate the dynamic and mutable process of meaning construction in the Internet domain.