Discourse as space/discourse as time: Reflections on the metalanguage of spoken and written discourse

Abstract

Planned discourses typically contain ‘traffic signals’ whose function is a purely pragmatic one of providing information about the organization of a text, principally by means of anaphoric and cataphoric cross-references. A crucial component of the metalanguage of extended discourse, these indexing devices typically involve spatial or temporal expressions, notably tenses and deictic adverbs. This paper argues that the use of spatial and temporal expressions to talk about discourse is not arbitrary, but rather the manifestation in language of two basic cognitive templates for conceptualizing discourse: as space and as time. I.e., we conceptualize discourses either as static entities whose parts relate to one another in two-dimensional space, or as dynamic processes unfolding through (listening or reading) time. The paper then explores why the temporal metaphor correlates in the first instance with spoken discourse, while the spatial metaphor comes into play only in conjuction with writing. The speech/writing dichotomy is then considered briefly in diachronic perspective by looking at evidence from the history of French that sheds light on a correlation between the transition from orality to literacy and a shift from an exclusively temporal discourse metalanguage to one that accommodates the spatial metaphor as well.