Spatial metaphor

Stolz report that when a culture s system of spatial conception does not include the spatial opposition of right and left, contrastive relations are communicated with an up-down or front-back spatial metaphor instead. Interestingly, though the reference frame used in spatial metaphors may vary depending upon a given culture s system of spatial conception, the use of spatial reference frames for communicating opposition appears to be common across many cultures. 

This review suggests a perhaps deceptively simple maxim use spatial elements and relations naturally. Naturalness is found in natural correspondences, figures of depiction, physical analogs, and spatial metaphors, derived from extensive human experience with the concrete world. It is revealed in language and in gesture as well as in a long history of graphic inventions. 

Time is an abstract non-spatial construct, but humans often adapt spatial structures to convey temporal information (e.g., spatial metaphors, charts, and graphs see Tversky, this volume). Similarly, signers adapt signing space to express temporal information both at the lexical level and at the discourse level (see also Kita, this volume, for a discussion of how the gesture space of speakers is used to represent temporal information). 

These examples illustrate how the form of certain signs reflects a mapping between spatial structure and temporal structure. The mapping is based on the spatial metaphor in which future time is mapped to space ahead of a reference point, and the past is mapped to space behind this point. The temporal reference point can be represented either by the signer s body or by the non-dominant hand. 

Boroditsky, L. (2000). Metaphoric structuring understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition, 75, 1-27. 

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