From The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities:

When we see words on a page, do these words stand directly for external realities? No. As we gave seen, words and the patterns into which words fit are triggers to the imagination. They are prompts we use to try to get one another to call up some of what we know and to work on it creatively to arrive at a meaning. Blending is a crucial part of this imaginative work, and, as we have seen blending is not the mere addition of one existing meaning to another to get their sum. Words by themselves give very little information about the meaning they prompt us to construct. (146)