Blending Narrative Spaces of the Reenactment Scenes in the Thin Blue Line

Abstract

In The Thin Blue Line, the story of a man (Randall Adams) convicted and sentenced to die for a murder that he did not commit, Morris (1988) presents a series of interviews demonstrating the investigations, creating reenactment scenes of the shooting built from the testimony and recollections of the detectives, suspects (David Harris), and witnesses involved in the murder. This paper is intended to propose a model of narrative blending associated with the mapping between the investigator and the suspect spaces in terms of ‘intentionality’ (Fauconnier and Turner, 2002). It will be seen that Harris’s failure to tell the truth explicitly is associated with his intentions and mental attitudes involving desire and fear, this input space of Harris’s deceiving intention interacting with another input space depicting his criminal record and violent traits. As his intention is revealed in these space interactions, Harris is found guilty in the blended space.


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