Abstract
AbstractThere is a distinction between languages that use the duration is length metaphor, like English (e.g., long time), and languages like Spanish that conceptualise time using the duration is quantity metaphor (e.g., much time). The present study examines the use of both metaphors, exploring their multimodal behaviour in Spanish speakers. We analyse co-speech gesture patterns in the TV news setting, using data from the NewsScape Library, that co-occur with expressions that trigger the duration is quantity construal (e.g., durante todo ‘during the whole’) and the duration is length construal in the from X to Y construction (e.g., desde el principio hasta el final ‘from beginning to end’). Results show that both metaphors tend to co-occur with a semantic gesture, with a preference for the lateral axis, as reported in previous studies. However, our data also indicate that the direction of the gesture changes depending on the construal. The duration is quantity metaphor tends to be performed with gestures with an outwards direction, in contrast with the duration is length construal, which employ a left-to-right directionality. These differences in gesture realisation point to the existence of different construals for the concept of temporal duration.
Highlights
The mental domain of time has attracted a great deal of attention throughout history
The linguistic searches performed in the DURATION IS LENGTH and DURATION IS QUANTITY search packages resulted in 1034 hits in the NewsScape repository (629 and 405 hits, respectively)
In Spanish, 64.21% of the DURATION IS LENGTH linguistic expressions co-occur with a temporal gesture; and a very similar ratio (60.44%) is found for the expressions associated to a DURATION IS QUANTITY construal
Summary
The mental domain of time has attracted a great deal of attention throughout history. Different aspects of the conceptualisation of time have been investigated from disciplines such as philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and history (e.g., Block, 1990, Munn, 1992, Damasio, 1994, Savitt, 1995, or Evans, 2004, inter alia). Out of this myriad of studies, it is the use of space to conceptualise time that emerges as the most agreed upon fact.
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