The Sensory-Motor Grounding of the TIME IS SPACE Conceptual Metaphor

Abstract

Conceptual metaphor theory postulates that interpreting metaphorical expressions requires mentally simulating the base sensory-motor experiences of the conceptual metaphor from which they are derived. Even though TIME IS SPACE is one of the most studied conceptual metaphors, the evidence about its embodied basis is scarce and equivocal. An experiment was carried out to test the thesis that interpreting EGO MOVING metaphorical expressions involves simulating the experience of moving forward towards a fixed destination. While participants in the experimental group read EGO MOVING metaphorical expressions after performing the sensory-motor activity that corresponded to the base domain, participants in the control group read those metaphorical expressions after performing an unrelated physical activity. No differences in reading times were found between the two conditions. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of previous research on the embodied perspective on metaphor comprehension.

Keywords

• metaphor
• conceptual metaphor
• time
• space
• embodied cognition