Cover not available

Article published In: Gesture
Vol. 17:1 (2018) ► pp.176–195

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Spatial conceptualization of sequence time in language and gesture

 | National Chengchi University
Published online: 19 October 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.00015.chu
Abstract
The study investigates the consistency and divergence between language and gesture in the expression of spatial orientations in the metaphorical conceptualization of sequence time, and the influence of the diversity in the reading and writing practices used in Taiwan on the spatialization of earlier and later events across modalities. The study was based on Chinese conversational data in face-to-face communication. The spontaneous gestures occurring along with speech reveal real-time metaphorical conceptualization in the context of use. It was found that the spatial orientations that are consistent between the two modalities bear out the online activation of the universal front-back and the culture-specific up-down concepts in the source domains. When speech and gesture are not redundant, the divergence reflects the more complex temporal spatialization involving two timelines or different orientations on the same timeline. The most preferred cross-modal combination of two timelines is the co-occurrence of lateral gestures and the front-back spatial words. Finally, the two different directions in which Chinese characters can be read and written were found to affect people’s conceptualization of the earlier or later event as being rightward or leftward.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Data and methods
  • Linguistic-gestural consistency in the manifestation of spatial conceptualization
  • Linguistic-gestural divergence in the manifestation of spatial conceptualization
  • General discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (45)
References
Bavelas, Janet Beavin & Nicole Chovil (2006). Hand gestures and facial displays as part of language use in face-to-face dialogue. In Valerie Manusov & Miles L. Patterson (Eds.), Handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 97–15). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bergen, Benjamin K. & Ting Ting Chan Lau (2012). Writing direction affects how people map space onto time. Frontiers in Psychology, 31 (April), 1–5. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boroditsky, Lera (2000). Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition, 751, 1–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 431, 1–22. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boroditsky, Lera & Michael Ramscar (2002). The roles of body and mind in abstract thought. Psychological Science, 131, 185–189. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boroditsky, Lera & Alice Gaby (2010). Remembrances of times East: absolute spatial representations of time in an Australian aboriginal community. Psychological Science, 21 (11), 1635–1639. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boroditsky, Lera, Orly Fuhrman, & Kelly McCormick (2011). Do English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently? Cognition, 118 (1), 123–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Casasanto, Daniel & Kyle Jasmin (2012). The hands of time: Temporal gesture in English speakers. Cognitive Linguistics, 23 (4), 643–674. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chan, Ting Ting & Benjamin Bergen (2005). Writing direction influences spatial cognition. In Bruno G. Bara, Lawrence Barsalou, & Monica Bucciarelli (Eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 412–417). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chui, Kawai (2011). Conceptual metaphors in gesture. Cognitive Linguistics, 22 (3), 437–458. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chui, Kawai & Huei-ling Lai (2008). The NCCU Corpus of Spoken Chinese: Mandarin, Hakka, and Southern Min. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics, 6 (2), 119–144.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chui, Kawai, Huei-ling Lai, & Hui-chen Chan (2017). The Taiwan Spoken Chinese Corpus. In Rint Sybesma (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics (pp. 257–259). Boston: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cienki, Alan (1998). Metaphoric gestures and some of their relations to verbal metaphorical expressions. In Jean-Pierre Koenig (Ed.), Discourse and cognition (pp. 189–205). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publication.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cienki, Alan & Cornelia Müller (2008). Metaphor, gesture, and thought. In Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (pp. 483–501). New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooperrider, Kensy & Rafael Núñez (2009). Across time, across the body: Transversal temporal gestures. Gesture, 9 (2), 181–206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Emmorey, Karen (2002). Language, cognition and the brain: Insights from sign language research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fuhrman, Orly & Lera Boroditsky (2010). Cross-cultural differences in mental representations of time: evidence from an implicit nonlinguistic task. Cognitive Science, 34 (8), 1430–1451. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gallese, Vittorio & George Lakoff (2005). The brain’s concepts: The role of the sensory–motor system in conceptual knowledge. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22 (3/4), 455–479. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W. (2006). Embodiment and cognitive science. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2008). Metaphor and gesture: Some implications for psychology. In Alan Cienki & Cornelia Müller (Eds.), Metaphor and gesture (pp. 291–301). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). Walking the walk while thinking about the talk: Embodied interpretation of metaphorical narratives. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 42 (4), 363–378. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gu, Yan, Lisette Mol, Marieke Hoetjes, & Marc Swerts (2017). Conceptual and lexical effects on gestures: The case of vertical spatial metaphors for time in Chinese. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32 (8), 1048–1063. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kendon, Adam (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Turner (1989). More cool than reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Le Guen, Olivier, Pool Balam, & Lorena Ildefonsa (2012). No metaphorical timeline in gesture and cognition among Yucatec Mayas. Frontiers in Psychology, 31, 271. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McNeill, David (1992). Hand and mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(Ed.) (2000). Language and gesture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2005). Gesture and thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Müller, Cornelia (2008). What gestures reveal about the nature of metaphor. In Alan Cienki & Cornelia Müller (Eds.), Metaphor and gesture (pp. 219–245). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Núñez, Rafael & Eve Sweetser (2006). With the future behind them: Convergent evidence from Aymara language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time. Cognitive Science, 30 (3), 1–49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Núñez, Rafael, Benjamin A. Motz, & Ursina Teuscher (2006). Time after time: The psychological reality of the Ego-and Time-Reference-Point distinction in metaphorical construals of time. Metaphor and Symbol, 211, 133–146. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Núñez, Rafael, Kensy Cooperrider, D. Doan, & Jürg Wassmann (2012). Contours of time: Topographic construals of past, present, and future in the Yupno valley of Papua New Guinea. Cognition, 124 (1), 25–35. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Núñez, Rafael & Kensy Cooperrider (2013). The tangle of space and time in human cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17 (5), 220–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ouellet, Marc, Julio Santiago, Ziv Israeli, & Shai Gabay (2010). Is the future the right time? Experimental Psychology, 571, 308–314. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, & Gail Jefferson (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn–taking for conversation. Language, 501, 696–735. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Santiago, Julio, Juan Lupáñez, Elvira Pérez, & María Jesús Funes (2007). Time (also) flies from left to right. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14 (3), 512–516. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Santiago, Julio, Antonio Román, Marc Ouellet, Nieves Rodríguez, & Pilar Pérez-Azor (2010). In hindsight, life flows from left to right. Psychological Research, 74 (1), 59–70. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, Nick J. Enfield, Penelope Brown, Christina Englert, Makoto Hayashi, Trine Heinemann, Gertie Hoymann, Federico Rossano, Jan Peter de Ruiter, Kyung-Eun Yoon, & Stephen C. Levinson (2009). Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106 (26), 10587–10592. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sullivan, Karen & Linh Thuy Bui (2016). With the future coming up behind them: Evidence that time approaches from behind in Vietnamese. Cognitive Linguistics, 27 (2), 205–233. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Torralbo, Ana, Julio Santiago, & Juan Lupiáñez (2006). Flexible conceptual projection of time onto spatial frames of reference. Cognitive Science, 30 (4), 745–757. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tversky, Barbara, Sol Kugelmass, & Atalia Winter (1991). Cross-cultural and developmental trends in graphic productions. Cognitive Psychology, 23 (4), 515–557. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walker, Esther & Kensy Cooperrider (2016). The continuity of metaphor: Evidence from temporal gestures. Cognitive Science, 401, 481–495. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Gu, Yan
2022. Time in Chinese hands. In Time Representations in the Perspective of Human Creativity [Human Cognitive Processing, 75], ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
Woodin, Greg, Bodo Winter, Marcus Perlman, Jeannette Littlemore, Teenie Matlock & Dennis Tay
2020. 'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive. PLOS ONE 15:11 ► pp. e0242142 ff. DOI logo
Gawne, Lauren, Chelsea Krajcik, Helene N. Andreassen, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker & Barbara F. Kelly
2019. Data transparency and citation in the journal Gesture . Gesture 18:1 ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Peng, Xin & Wei Zhang
2019. Talk and gesture in storytelling sequences in Mandarin conversation. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 10:2 ► pp. 133 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue