Time After Time: The Psychological Reality of the Ego- and Time-Reference-Point Distinction in Metaphorical Construals of Time

Núñez, Rafael; Motz, Benjamin; Teuscher, Ursina

doi:10.1207/s15327868ms2103_1

Cited by 206 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…We gesture temporal relations, and rely heavily on spatial words (e.g., forward , back , long , short ) to talk about the order and duration of events (e.g., Clark, 1973; Traugott, 1978; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). People’s private mental representations of time also appear to be based in space: irrelevant spatial information readily affects people’s judgments of temporal order and duration (Boroditsky, 2000; Boroditsky and Ramscar, 2002; Matlock et al, 2005; Núñez et al, 2006; Casasanto and Boroditsky, 2008; Boroditsky and Gaby, 2010), and people seem to implicitly and automatically generate spatial representations when thinking about time (Gevers et al, 2003; Torralbo et al, 2006; Santiago et al, 2007; Ishihara et al, 2008; Weger and Pratt, 2008; Fuhrman and Boroditsky, 2010; Miles et al, 2010). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consciousness, brain, neuroplasticity

Lai¹,

Boroditsky²

2013

Front. Psychol.

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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.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consciousness, brain, neuroplasticity

Lai¹,

Boroditsky²

2013

Front. Psychol.

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“…More recently, alternative frameworks have been devised in an attempt to relate these temporal perspectives more closely to theories of spatial frames of reference and thus to account for a broader range of possible perspectives (e.g., Bender et al, 2010;Bender, Bennardo, & Beller, 2005;Kranjec, 2006;Moore, 2006;Núñez, Motz, & Teuscher, 2006;Tenbrink, 2011;Zinken, 2010; for a review, see Bender & Beller, 2014). This shift in focus is motivated by the recognition that the reading of "being in front of" or "being moved forward from" in time presupposes the same type of activity as in space-namely, the localization of one entity in reference to another.…”

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confidence: 99%

Temporal frames of reference in three Germanic languages: Individual consistency, interindividual consensus, and cross-linguistic variability

Rothe-Wulf

Beller

Bender

2015

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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A task like "moving a meeting forward" reveals the ambiguity inherent in temporal references. That speakers of U.S. English do not agree on how to solve it is well established: Roughly one half moves the meeting futurewards, the other half pastwards. But the extent to which individual speakers, rather than groups of speakers, consider such phrases as ambiguous has not been scrutinized. Does the split in readings result from a lack of intraindividual consistency or from a lack of interindividual consensus? And how specific is U.S. English in this regard when compared to other closely related Germanic languages? Based on a taxonomy of spatiotemporal frames of reference (FoRs), we conducted two experiments with speakers of Swedish, U.S. English, and German to assess individual preferences for temporal FoRs, intra- and cross-linguistic variability, consistency and long-term stability of these preferences, and possible effects of priming a spatial FoR. The data reveal cross-linguistic differences, both in terms of which temporal FoRs speakers prefer (the absolute FoR in Sweden, the intrinsic FoR in German, and both of these in the US) and in terms of the extent to which these preferences are shared and stable (high consensus and consistency in Sweden and Germany, and low consensus and partial consistency in the US). Overall, no effect of spatial priming was observed; only speakers of U.S. English with a baseline preference for the absolute temporal FoR seemed to be susceptible to spatial priming. Thus, the assumption that temporal references are affected by spatial references is only weakly supported.

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“…It could thus be, as was argued by one of the reviewers for this paper, that spatial and temporal conceptions may simply not map thoroughly enough to produce co-variation at this level of inspection. Given the range of both static and dynamic settings mustered for our comparison and the variety of response coding (both as FoRs and as simple further/nearer direction), it remains puzzling, though, that absolutely no co-variation emerged for the USA participants, whose temporal references do co-vary with different – and occasionally superficial – manipulations (e.g., Boroditsky and Ramscar, 2002; Kranjec, 2006; Núñez et al, 2006; Weger and Pratt, 2008). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Recent attempts to systematically map taxonomies of spatial FoRs onto the temporal domain yielded a variety of accounts (e.g., Bender et al, 2005, 2010; Kranjec, 2006; Moore, 2006, 2011; Núñez et al, 2006; Zinken, 2010; Tenbrink, 2011; Yu, 2012), but are far from converging. In line with these theoretical disputes, empirical studies also paint a mixed picture.…”

Section: Cultural Variability In Space-time Mappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving Forward in Space and Time: How Strong is the Conceptual Link between Spatial and Temporal Frames of Reference?

et al. 2012

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People often use spatial vocabulary to describe temporal relations, and this increasingly has motivated attempts to map spatial frames of reference (FoRs) onto time. Recent research suggested that speech communities, which differ in how they conceptualize space, may also differ in how they conceptualize time and, more specifically, that the preferences for spatial FoRs should carry over to the domain of time. Here, we scrutinize this assumption (a) by reviewing data from recent studies on temporal references, (b) by comparing data we had collected in previous studies on preferences for spatial and temporal FoRs in four languages, (c) by analyzing new data from dynamic spatial tasks that resemble the temporal tasks more closely, and (d) by assessing the co-variation of individual preferences of English speakers across space and time. While the first set of data paints a mixed picture, the latter three do not support the assumption of a close link between referencing preferences across domains. We explore possible reasons for this lack of consistency and discuss implications for research on temporal references.

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Time After Time: The Psychological Reality of the Ego- and Time-Reference-Point Distinction in Metaphorical Construals of Time

Cited by 206 publications

References 11 publications

Consciousness, brain, neuroplasticity

Consciousness, brain, neuroplasticity

Temporal frames of reference in three Germanic languages: Individual consistency, interindividual consensus, and cross-linguistic variability

Moving Forward in Space and Time: How Strong is the Conceptual Link between Spatial and Temporal Frames of Reference?

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