Perceptions of Space in the Multilingual Mind

Abstract

One of the major sub-competences within any model of communicative competence has to do with the socio-cultural aspects of appropriate functioning in another language. A significant category within this socio-cultural component is the construct of space. The construct of space is bi-dimensional: physical and mental. In relation to the latter, psychological studies consider various aspects: those of a personal nature, but also those of an interactive nature. In interaction, personal space (proxemics), seen as “(…) the physical distance which people like to maintain between themselves and others” (Banyard and Hayes : 128), constitutes an important factor in successful communication between people. It varies “according to their relationship with and attitude to other people, and according to norms and contexts” (ibid.: 128). It may be safely assumed that those norms and contexts are culturally-grounded. This project investigates whether connotative meanings of the concept of space reflected in the subjects’ mother tongue (L1) mental lexicon cross the borders of languages known to the subjects, i.e., whether they are the same in the L1 and foreign language mental lexicons (L2 and L3) of the questioned subjects. It is an ongoing project based on two university contexts, Polish and Portuguese. It focuses on the similarities and differences between the space perceptions of Polish and Portuguese trilingual language users. The data collected comes from association tasks performed in L1 (Polish and Portuguese), L2 (English) and L3 (German). This chapter reports on the first stage of the project, in which comment will be made on L1 perceptions of space of Polish and Portuguese subjects. It will also discuss the multilingual associations with the concept of space of the Polish subjects.