Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Linguistic Relativity in Conceptual Metaphors

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Psychology of Bilingualism

Part of the book series: The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series ((BMBBS))

  • 1866 Accesses

Abstract

Language is essential to human life, such as describing objects or events and sharing ideas with others. One of the most central questions in linguistics and cognitive psychology is whether language influences human cognition, which has been investigated in various domains such as color, space, and number. Recently, some researchers investigated the influence of language on the processing of conceptual metaphors, such as space–pitch metaphor and space–time metaphor. In this selective review, we first present the background of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and the relationship between bilingualism, conceptual metaphor, and embodiment. Then, we focus on space–time metaphor, a type of conceptual metaphor to depict the impact of bilinguals’ spatial language on their mental representation of time. Despite the mixed evidence in the literature, most of the current findings supported the linguistic relativity hypothesis that spatial language does have an impact on bilinguals’ mental representation of time. We conclude by providing a tentative answer to the effect of linguistic relativity on conceptual metaphor processing and bringing up some questions that will lead to future research.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Au, T. K.-F. (1983). Chinese and English counterfactuals: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis revisited. Cognition, 15, 155–187.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 577–660.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Barsalou, L. W. (2003). Situated simulation in the human conceptual system. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18, 513–562.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bender, A., Beller, S., & Bennardo, G. (2010). Temporal frames of reference: Conceptual analysis and empirical evidence from German, English, mandarin Chinese and Tongan. Journal of Cognition & Culture, 10, 283–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bergen, B. K., & Lau, T. C. (2012). Writing direction affects how people map space onto time. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 109. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00109

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Berlin, B., & Kay, P. (1969). Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boot, I., & Pecher, D. (2010). Representation of categories metaphorical use of the container schema. Experimental Psychology, 58, 162–170.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boroditsky, L. (2000). Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition, 75, 1–28.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43, 1–22.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304, 62–65.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boroditsky, L., Fuhrman, O., & McCormick, K. (2011). Do English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently? Cognition, 118, 123–129.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boroditsky, L., & Gaby, A. (2010). Remembrances of times east: Absolute spatial representations of time in an Australian aboriginal community. Psychological Science, 21, 1635–1639.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boroditsky, L., & Ramscar, M. (2002). The roles of body and mind in abstract thought. Psychological Science, 13, 185–189.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, P. (2012). Time and space in Tzeltal: Is the future uphill? Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 212. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00212

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Cai, Z. G., Connell, L., & Holler, J. (2013). Time does not flow without language: Spatial distance affects temporal duration regardless of movement or direction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 973–980.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casasanto, D. (2008). Who’s afraid of the big bad Whorf? Crosslinguistic differences in temporal language and thought. Language Learning, 58, 63–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casasanto, D. (2009). When is a linguistic metaphor a conceptual metaphor? In V. Evans & S. Pourcel (Eds.), New directions in cognitive linguistics (Vol. 24, pp. 127–145).

    Google Scholar 

  • Casasanto, D. (2012). Whorfian hypothesis in Oxford bibliographies online: Anthropology. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Casasanto, D., & Boroditsky, L. (2008). Time in the mind: Using space to think about time. Cognition, 106, 579–593.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Casasanto, D., Boroditsky, L., Phillips, W., Greene, J., Goswami, S., Bocanegra-Thiel, S., et al. (2004). How deep are effects of language on thought? Time estimation in speakers of English, Indonesian, Greek, and Spanish. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference Cognitive Science Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Casasanto, D., & Bottini, R. (2014). Mirror reading can reverse the flow of time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 473–479.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, T. T., & Bergen, B. (2005). Writing direction influences spatial cognition. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen, J.-Y. (2007). Do Chinese and English speakers think about time differently? Failure of replicating Boroditsky (2001). Cognition, 104, 427–436.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, J.-Y., Friederich, M., & Shu, H. (2013). Whether Chinese speakers think about time more vertically depends on their immediate and lifetime experience of reading horizontal or vertical texts: Evidence from contextual priming. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen, J.-Y., & O’Seaghdha, P. G. (2013). Do Mandarin and English speakers think about time differently? Review of existing evidence and some new data. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 41, 338–358.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crawford, L. E., Margolies, S. M., Drake, J. T., & Murphy, M. E. (2006). Affect biases memory of location: Evidence for the spatial representation of affect. Cognition & Emotion, 20, 1153–1169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dolscheid, S., Hunnius, S., Casasanto, D., & Majid, A. (2014). Prelinguistic infants are sensitive to space-pitch associations found across cultures. Psychological Science, 25, 1256–1261.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dolscheid, S., Shayan, S., Majid, A., & Casasanto, D. (2013). The thickness of musical pitch: Psychophysical evidence for linguistic relativity. Psychological Science, 24, 613–621.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dong, W. (2004). The Chinese conceptualization of time revisited. Contemporary Linguistics, 6, 189–190.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fedden, S., & Boroditsky, L. (2012). Spatialization of time in Mian. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 485. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00485

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, A., & Davies, I. R. L. (2004). New evidence for infant colour categories. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22, 349–377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, A., Drivonikou, G. V., Bevis, L., Davies, I. R. L., Kay, P., & Regier, T. (2008). Categorical perception of color is lateralized to the right hemisphere in infants, but to the left hemisphere in adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105, 3221–3225.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Fuhrman, O., & Boroditsky, L. (2007). Mental time-lines follow writing direction: Comparing English and Hebrew speakers. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fuhrman, O., & Boroditsky, L. (2010). Cross-cultural differences in mental representations of time: Evidence from an implicit nonlinguistic task. Cognitive Science, 34, 1430–1451.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fuhrman, O., McCormick, K., Chen, E., Jiang, H., Shu, D., Mao, S., et al. (2011). How linguistic and cultural forces shape conceptions of time: English and Mandarin time in 3D. Cognitive Science, 35, 1305–1328.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gaby, A. (2012). The Thaayorre think of time like they talk of space. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 300. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00300

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Gentner, D., & Bowdle, B. (2008). Metaphor as structure-mapping. In R. Gibbs (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (pp. 109–128). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Gentner, D., Imai, M., & Boroditsky, L. (2002). As time goes by: Evidence for two systems in processing space time metaphors. Language and Cognitive Processes, 17, 537–565.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibbs, R. W., Costa Lima, P. L., & Francozo, E. (2004). Metaphor is grounded in embodied experience. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 1189–1210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, A. L., Regier, T., Kay, P., & Ivry, R. B. (2006). Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, 489–494.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gozli, D. G., Chow, A., Chasteen, A. L., & Pratt, J. (2013). Valence and vertical space: Saccade trajectory deviations reveal metaphorical spatial activation. Visual Cognition, 21, 628–646.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hardin, C., & Banaji, M. R. (1993). The influence of language on thought. Social Cognition, 11, 277–308.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hauk, O., Johnsrude, I., & Pulvermuller, F. (2004). Somatotopic representation of action words in human motor and premotor cortex. Neuron, 41, 301–307.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Heider, E. R. (1972). Universals in color naming and memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 93, 10–20.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Heider, E. R., & Olivier, D. C. (1972). The structure of the color space in naming and memory for two languages. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 337–354.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heider, K. G. (1970). The Dugum Dani. New York: Aldine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horstmann, G. (2010). Tone-affect compatibility with affective stimuli and affective responses. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 2239–2250.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huang, Y., & Tse, C.-S. (2015). Re-examining the automaticity and directionality of the activation of the spatial-valence “Good is Up” metaphoric association. PLoS One, 10, e0123371. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0123371

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Hunt, E., & Agnoli, F. (1991). The Whorfian hypothesis: A cognitive psychology perspective. Psychological Review, 98, 377–389.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • January, D., & Kako, E. (2007). Re-evaluating evidence for linguistic relativity: Reply to Boroditsky (2001). Cognition, 104, 417–426.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kay, P., & Kempton, W. (1984). What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? American Anthropologist, 86, 65–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lai, V. T., & Boroditsky, L. (2013). The immediate and chronic influence of spatio-temporal metaphors on the mental representations of time in English, Mandarin, and Mandarin-English speakers. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 142. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00142

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Lai, V. T., Rodriguez, G. G., & Narasimhan, B. (2014). Thinking-for-speaking in early and late bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17, 139–152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (Vol. 2, 2nd ed., pp. 202–251). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by (Vol. 111). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levinson, S. C. (2003). Space in language and cognition: Explorations in cognitive diversity (Vol. 5). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Louwerse, M., & Jeuniaux, P. (2008). Language comprehension is both embodied and symbolic. In M. de Vega, A. Glenberg, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Symbols, embodiment, and meaning (pp. 309–326). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Louwerse, M., & Jeuniaux, P. (2010). The linguistic and embodied nature of conceptual processing. Cognition, 114, 96–104.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Meier, B. P., & Robinson, M. D. (2004). Why the sunny side is up: Associations between affect and vertical position. Psychological Science, 15, 243–247.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Merritt, D. J., Casasanto, D., & Brannon, E. M. (2010). Do monkeys think in metaphors? Representations of space and time in monkeys and humans. Cognition, 117, 191–202.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Miles, L. K., Tan, L., Noble, G. D., Lumsden, J., & Macrae, C. N. (2011). Can a mind have two time lines? Exploring space-time mapping in mandarin and English speakers. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 598–604.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Niedenthal, P. M., Barsalou, L. W., Winkielman, P., Krauth-Gruber, S., & Ric, F. (2005). Embodiment in attitudes, social perception, and emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 184–211.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Núñez, R., Cooperrider, K., Doan, D., & Wassmann, J. (2012). Contours of time: Topographic construals of past, present, and future in the Yupno valley of Papua New Guinea. Cognition, 124, 25–35.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ostinelli, M., Luna, D., & Ringberg, T. (2013). When up brings you down: The effects of imagined vertical movements on motivation, performance, and consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24, 271–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ouellet, M., Santiago, J., Israeli, Z., & Gabay, S. (2010). Is the future the right time? Experimental Psychology, 57, 308–314.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ozgen, E., & Davies, I. R. L. (1998). Turkish color terms: Tests of Berlin and Kay’s theory of color universals and linguistic relativity. Linguistics, 36, 919–956.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1972). The psychology of the child (Vol. 5001). New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberson, D., & Davidoff, J. (2000). The categorical perception of colors and facial expressions: The effect of verbal interference. Memory & Cognition, 28, 977–986.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roberson, D., Davies, I., & Davidoff, J. (2000). Color categories are not universal: Replications and new evidence from a stone-age culture. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129, 369–398.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roberson, D., Pak, H., & Hanley, J. R. (2008). Categorical perception of colour in the left and right visual field is verbally mediated: Evidence from Korean. Cognition, 107, 752–762.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Scott, A. (1989). The vertical dimension and time in Mandarin. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 9, 295–314.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shayan, S., Ozturk, O., Bowerman, M., & Majid, A. (2014). Spatial metaphor in language can promote the development of cross-modal mappings in children. Developmental Science, 17, 636–643.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, E. R., & Semin, G. N. R. (2004). Socially situated cognition: Cognition in its social context. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 53–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, L. B. (2005). Cognition as a dynamic system: Principles from embodiment. Developmental Review, 25, 278–298.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tse, C.-S., & Altarriba, J. (2008). Evidence against linguistic relativity in Chinese and English: A case study of spatial and temporal metaphors. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 8, 335–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tse, C.-S., Kurby, C. A., & Du, F. (2010). Perceptual simulations and linguistic representations have differential effects on speeded relatedness judgments and recognition memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 928–941.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ulrich, R., & Maienborn, C. (2010). Left-right coding of past and future in language: The mental timeline during sentence processing. Cognition, 117, 126–138.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, P., Bremner, J. G., Mason, U., Spring, J., Mattock, K., Slater, A., et al. (2010). Preverbal infants’ sensitivity to synaesthetic cross-modality correspondences. Psychological Science, 21, 21–25.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Weger, U. W., Meier, B. P., Robinson, M. D., & Inhoff, A. W. (2007). Things are sounding up: Affective influences on auditory tone perception. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 517–521.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weger, U. W., & Pratt, J. (2008). Time flies like an arrow: Space-time compatibility effects suggest the use of a mental timeline. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 426–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 625–636.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Winawer, J., Witthoft, N., Frank, M. C., Wu, L., Wade, A. R., & Boroditsky, L. (2007). Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 7780–7785.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Zwaan, R. A., & Yaxley, R. H. (2003). Spatial iconicity affects semantic relatedness judgments. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 954–958.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Centre for Advancement of Chinese Language Education and Research, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

    Yanli Huang

  2. Department of Educational Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

    Chi-Shing Tse

  3. Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

    Chi-Shing Tse

Authors
  1. Yanli Huang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Chi-Shing Tse
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yanli Huang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Communication Sciences and Disorders, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Alfredo Ardila

  2. Department of Psychology and Communication, Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas, USA

    Anna B. Cieślicka

  3. Department of Psychology and Communication, Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas, USA

    Roberto R. Heredia

  4. Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Davie, Florida, USA

    Mónica Rosselli

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Huang, Y., Tse, CS. (2017). Linguistic Relativity in Conceptual Metaphors. In: Ardila, A., Cieślicka, A., Heredia, R., Rosselli, M. (eds) Psychology of Bilingualism. The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64099-0_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation