Abstract
In this paper we examine whether experience with spatial metaphors for time has an influence on people’s representation of time. In particular we ask whether spatio-temporal metaphors can have both chronic and immediate effects on temporal thinking. In Study 1, we examine the prevalence of ego-moving representations for time in Mandarin speakers, English speakers, and Mandarin-English (ME) bilinguals. As predicted by observations in linguistic analyses, we find that Mandarin speakers are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English speakers. Further, we find that ME bilinguals tested in English are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English monolinguals (an effect of L1 on meaning-making in L2), and also that ME bilinguals tested in Mandarin are more likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are Mandarin monolinguals (an effect of L2 on meaning-making in L1). These findings demonstrate that habits of metaphor use in one language can influence temporal reasoning in another language, suggesting the metaphors can have a chronic effect on patterns in thought. In Study 2 we test Mandarin speakers using either horizontal or vertical metaphors in the immediate context of the task. We find that Mandarin speakers are more likely to construct front-back representations of time when understanding front-back metaphors, and more likely to construct up-down representations of time when understanding up-down metaphors. These findings demonstrate that spatio-temporal metaphors can also have an immediate influence on temporal reasoning. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the metaphors we use to talk about time have both immediate and long-term consequences for how we conceptualize and reason about this fundamental domain of experience.
Highlights
To represent time, many cultures around the world rely on space
English speakers were more likely than Mandarin speakers to interpret the temporal forward as change to a later time (Friday, 2:00 p.m.), a pattern consistent with the ego-moving perspective
These results are consistent with the hypothesis that Mandarin speakers are more likely to take a time-moving perspective on time than are English speakers
Summary
Many cultures around the world rely on space. People spatialize time in cultural artifacts like graphs, time-lines, orthography, clocks, sundials, hourglasses, and calendars. The findings across a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic paradigms suggest that Mandarin speakers are more likely to spatialize time vertically than are English speakers (Boroditsky et al, 2011; Fuhrman et al, 2011; Miles et al, 2011; Bergen and Lau, 2012) Attributing this crosslinguistic difference in spatialization to differences in metaphor is somewhat complicated because of the concomitant differences in writing direction, which may be responsible for at least some of the cross-cultural differences in spatializing time (e.g., see Bergen and Lau, 2012). If processing these highly conventionalized spatio-temporal metaphors evokes spatial meaning in people’s minds, we may see a difference in how Mandarin speakers spatialize time when processing front-back vs. up-down metaphors
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