Cognitive Bases of the New Native American Femininity: The Role of Blending Theory in Sister Nations’ Collective Identity

Carmen Sancho Guinda (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)

Volume 3, Issue 2

Abstract

Within the framework of social constructivism, this article seeks to explore the role played by conceptual integration in the collective identification of an oppressed ethnic minority, Sister Nations, a gendered contemporary version of the traditional North-Amerindian extended family. To this end it examines significant examples from their poetic production-a repository of tribal storytelling agreed as a lingua franca of de-colonization by in-group members-and  focuses on its semantic impact at the ideational, interpersonal and textual levels, both from a propositional and procedural standpoint. Findings reveal two major types of blended spaces: spatio-temporal and personal, as well as the existence of a dual pragmatics of reconciliation and resistance acting as a pedagogical and vindicating strategy that maintains in-group cohesion and mediates between this Native collectivity and the domineering Euroamerican societies. Thus, blending contributes to poetic meaning, through which identities are constructed and disseminated, and proves to be an active agent of social change.

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