Elsevier

Cognition

Volume 75, Issue 1, 14 April 2000, Pages 1-28
Cognition

Metaphoric structuring: understanding time through spatial metaphors

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00073-6Get rights and content

Abstract

The present paper evaluates the claim that abstract conceptual domains are structured through metaphorical mappings from domains grounded directly in experience. In particular, the paper asks whether the abstract domain of time gets its relational structure from the more concrete domain of space. Relational similarities between space and time are outlined along with several explanations of how these similarities may have arisen. Three experiments designed to distinguish between these explanations are described. The results indicate that (1) the domains of space and time do share conceptual structure, (2) spatial relational information is just as useful for thinking about time as temporal information, and (3) with frequent use, mappings between space and time come to be stored in the domain of time and so thinking about time does not necessarily require access to spatial schemas. These findings provide some of the first empirical evidence for Metaphoric Structuring. It appears that abstract domains such as time are indeed shaped by metaphorical mappings from more concrete and experiential domains such as space.

Introduction

How do we come to represent and reason about abstract domains like time, love, justice, or ideas? There are at least two interesting puzzles here. First, how do we learn about abstract domains despite the dearth and vagueness of sensory information available about them? And second, how are we able to coordinate our mental representations of these domains enough to agree (at least some of the time) on the fairness of a decision, the strength of someone's love, or the worth of an idea? As a potential solution, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposed that the human conceptual system is structured around only a small set of experiential concepts – concepts that emerge directly out of experience and are defined in their own terms. These fundamental experiential concepts include a set of basic spatial relations (e.g. up/down, front/back), a set of physical ontological concepts (e.g. entity, container), and a set of basic experiences or actions (e.g. eating, moving). According to this view, all other concepts that do not emerge directly out of physical experience must be metaphoric in nature. Lakoff further proposes that these metaphoric, or abstract concepts are understood and structured through metaphorical mappings from a small set of fundamental experiential concepts (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).

As evidence for this view, Lakoff and colleagues have pointed out that people often use metaphors to talk about abstract domains, and that in the majority of these conventional metaphors, language from a concrete domain is used to talk about the more abstract domain (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, Lakoff and Kovecses, 1987). These conventional metaphors often reveal a particular source-to-target mapping, e.g. MIND IS A CONTAINER, and IDEAS ARE FOOD. To illustrate the IDEAS ARE FOOD schema, for example, readers might be reluctant to ‘swallow Lakoff's claim’ because they haven't yet gotten to ‘the meaty part of the paper’, or because they ‘just can't wait to really sink their teeth into the theory’.

Such linguistic patterns suggest that there may be some systematic metaphoric relationships between abstract and concrete domains. However, the psychological reality of the proposed metaphoric relationships remains an open question. Lately, the metaphoric view of representation has been the subject of rigorous scrutiny and debate (Gibbs, 1996, Murphy, 1996, Murphy, 1997). Two main criticisms have been put forward (Murphy, 1996, Murphy, 1997). First, the majority of evidence in support of metaphoric representation has been of the purely linguistic form.1 Strictly linguistic evidence can have only limited import for theories of mental representation as it would be scientifically imprudent to assume that patterns in language are necessarily a reflection of patterns in thought. Second, the theory has not been specified in enough detail to serve as a testable psychological model.

This paper aims to provide a more rigorous empirical treatment of metaphorical representation. To this end, it will be necessary to (1) propose one detailed account of how abstract concepts are learned, represented, and reasoned about, (2) provide psychological evidence in support of this proposal, and (3) show that the current evidence is not consistent with a plausible non-metaphoric account. The view proposed in this paper – the Metaphoric Structuring View – is derived from the Metaphoric Representation View set forth by Lakoff, but can be evaluated independently.2

The Metaphoric Structuring View proposes that metaphors are used for organizing information within abstract domains. Those aspects of abstract domains that are evident from world experience may be represented in their own right. The job of the metaphor is to provide relational structure to an abstract domain by importing it (by analogy) from a more concrete domain. The mechanism for this type of metaphoric structuring may be the same as that used to understand analogies (Gentner & Wolff, 1997). Just like analogies, metaphors import the relational structure and not the surface features of the base domain to the target domain. When considering the IDEAS ARE FOOD metaphor, for example, we are not fooled into thinking that fried ideas are especially tasty or that thinking too much makes one fat. We can, however, infer that taking in a good idea can satisfy our intellectual appetite. In this case, the metaphor uses the relationship between food and hunger to describe the relationship between ideas and intellectual needs. The Metaphoric Structuring View proposes that metaphors provide relational structure to those domains where the structure may not be obvious from world experience.

This paper will focus on the abstract domain of time and consider whether time is structured through spatial metaphors. I will highlight a set of relational similarities between the conceptual domains of space and time, consider several explanations of how these similarities may have arisen, and describe three experiments that distinguish among these explanations. The described experiments will test the psychological validity of the claim that abstract conceptual domains such as time are structured by metaphorical mappings from more concrete experiential domains such as space.

How is the domain of time learned, represented, and reasoned about? Certainly some elements of time are apparent in our experience with the world. From experience, we know that each moment in time only happens once, that we can only be in one place at one time, that we can never go back, and that many aspects of our experience are not permanent (i.e. faculty meetings are not everlasting, but rather begin and end at certain times). In other words, our experience dictates that time is a phenomenon in which we, the observer, experience continuous unidirectional change that may be marked by appearance and disappearance of objects and events. These aspects of conceptual time should be universal across cultures and languages. Indeed this appears to be the case. In order to capture the sequential order of events, time is generally conceived as a one-dimensional, directional entity. Across languages, the spatial terms imported to talk about time are also one-dimensional, directional terms such as ahead/behind, or up/down, rather than multi-dimensional or symmetric terms such as shallow/deep, or left/right (Clark, 1973, Traugott, 1978). Aspects of time that are extractable from world experience (temporally bounded events, unidirectional change, etc.) may be represented in their own right. However, there are many aspects of our concept of time that are not observable in the world. For example, does time move horizontally or vertically? Does it move forward or back, left or right, up or down? Does it move past us, or do we move through it? All of these aspects are left unspecified in our experience with the world. They are, however, specified in our language – most often through spatial metaphors. Whether we are looking forward to a brighter tomorrow, falling behind schedule, or proposing theories ahead of our time, we are relying on spatial terms to talk about time. The correspondences between space and time in language may afford us insight into how the domain of time is structured and reasoned about.

The Metaphorical Structuring View proposes that those aspects of time that are specified through spatial metaphors will be shaped by the metaphors used (see Boroditsky, 1999 for cross-linguistic evidence to this effect). The spatial schemas invoked by these metaphors will provide the relational information needed to organize events in time. This view can be formulated in several different strengths.3 The weak version maintains that spatial metaphors play a role in shaping the domain of time. However, with frequent use, an independent representation is established in the domain of time, and so spatial schemas may no longer need to be accessed in thinking about time. This view is supported by recent findings showing that whereas novel metaphors are processed as on-line metaphorical mappings, conventional or frequently used metaphors tend to have stored meanings (Bowdle and Gentner, 1995, Bowdle and Gentner, 1999). If a metaphorical mapping is frequently set up between two domains, the result of this mapping may eventually become stored in the target domain to avoid future costs of carrying out the same mapping.

Unlike the weak version, the strong version of Metaphorical Structuring maintains that spatial schemas are always necessary to think about time. On this view, relational information necessary to organize events is imported on-line from the domain of space and is not stored in the domain of time. Therefore, thinking about time requires accessing not only the temporal components of a scenario, but also the spatial schemas necessary to organize these temporal components. Experiments reported in this paper will test these two different formulations of the Metaphorical Structuring View and will attempt to establish (1) whether the domains of space and time are conceptually related, (2) whether spatial schemas can be used to understand time, and (3) whether spatial schemas are necessary to understand time.

Like most abstract domains, time can be described through more than one metaphor. This paper will focus on the event-sequencing aspect of conceptual time, that is, the way events are temporally ordered with respect to each other and to the speaker (e.g. ‘The worst is behind us’ or ‘Thursday is before Saturday’). In English, two dominant spatial metaphors are used to sequence events in time (Clark, 1973, Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, McTaggart, 1908). The first is the ego-moving metaphor, in which the ‘ego’ or the observer's context progresses along the time-line toward the future as in ‘We are coming up on Christmas’ (see Fig. 1a). The second is the time-moving metaphor, in which a time-line is conceived as a river or a conveyor belt on which events are moving from the future to the past as in ‘Christmas is coming up’ (see Fig. 1b). These two metaphors lead to different assignments of front and back to a time-line (Clark, 1973, Fillmore, 1971, Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, McTaggart, 1908, Traugott, 1978).4

In the ego-moving metaphor, front is assigned to a future or later event (e.g. ‘The revolution is before us’). In this example, the ‘revolution’ is a later or future event, and is said to be before because it is further along in the observer's direction of motion. An analogous schema exists for ordering objects in a line (see Fig. 2a). When an observer moves along a path, objects are ordered according to the direction of motion of the observer. In Fig. 2a, the dark can is said to be in front because it is further along in the observer's direction of motion.

In the time-moving metaphor, front is assigned to a past or earlier event (e.g. ‘The revolution was over before breakfast’). Here, the ‘revolution’ is the earlier event, and is said to be before because it is further along in the direction of motion of time. Once again an analogous system exists for ordering objects in space (see Fig. 2b). When two objects (without intrinsic fronts) are moving, they are assigned fronts based on their direction of motion. In Fig. 2b, the light-colored widget is said to be in front because it is further along in the widgets’ direction of motion.

A priori, there is no reason to believe that the linguistic distinction between the ego-moving and time-moving metaphors has any psychological implications regarding how these metaphors are processed. In the absence of further evidence, a more parsimonious view is that the distinction between these two different ways of talking about time is only language-deep. A skeptic might argue that linguistic evidence such as that provided by Lakoff and colleagues is at best an imaginative cataloguing of etymological relics with no psychological consequences. This skeptical position will be dubbed the Dubious View. The first challenge, then, is to empirically establish that the linguistic distinction between the ego-moving and time-moving metaphors has psychological consequences.

To investigate whether ego-moving and time-moving expressions are actually understood through different conceptual schemas, Gentner, Imai and Boroditsky (1999) measured processing time for temporal expressions presented either consistently or inconsistently with respect to either the ego-moving or the time-moving schema. They reasoned that if temporal expressions were processed as parts of globally consistent conceptual schemas, then processing should be fluent if the expressions are kept consistent to one schema (processing time should remain constant). If the schemas are switched, however, processing should be disrupted, and processing time should increase as it would take extra time to discard the old conceptual structure and set up a new one.

Participants were presented with a block of temporal statements that were either consistent with one schema, or switched between the ego-moving and time-moving schemas. For each statement (e.g. Christmas is six days before New Year's Day), participants were given a time-line of events (e.g. Past…New Year's Day…Future), and had to place an event (in this case Christmas) on the time-line. Response time data showed that switching schemas did indeed increase processing time.

In another study conducted at Chicago's O'Hare airport, participants were passengers not aware of being in a psychological study (Gentner et al., 1999). Participants were approached by the experimenter and asked a priming question in either the ego-moving form (Is Boston ahead or behind us in time?) or the time-moving form (Is it earlier or later in Boston than it is here?). After the participant answered, the experimenter asked the target question (So should I turn my watch forward or back?) which was consistent with the ego-moving form. The experimenter measured response times for the target question with a stopwatch disguised as a wristwatch. Once again, response times for consistently primed questions were shorter than for inconsistently primed questions. Switching schemas caused an increase in processing time. These results suggest that two distinct conceptual schemas are involved in sequencing events in time.

Converging evidence comes from studies that used a disambiguation paradigm (McGlone & Harding, 1998). Participants answered blocks of questions about days of the week phrased in either the ego-moving metaphor (e.g. ‘We passed the deadline two days ago’) or the time-moving metaphor (e.g. ‘The deadline passed two days ago’). For each statement, participants indicated the day of the week on which the event in question had occurred or would occur. At the end of each block, participants read an ambiguous temporal statement such as ‘The meeting originally scheduled for next Wednesday has been moved forward two days’, and were asked to perform the same task. The ‘moved forward’ statement is ambiguous because it could be interpreted using one or the other schema to yield different answers. Participants in the ego-moving condition tended to disambiguate the ‘moved forward’ statement in an ego-moving-consistent manner (thought the meeting was on Friday), whereas participants in the time-moving condition tended to disambiguate in a time-moving-consistent manner (thought the meeting was on Monday). These studies provide strong evidence for the psychological reality of two distinct, globally consistent schemas for sequencing events in time.

Since the linguistic distinction between the ego-moving and time-moving metaphors appears to be psychologically real, the Dubious View (that claims that differences between the two metaphors are only language-deep) can be rejected. However, the evidence described so far is not sufficient to conclude that time is understood as a metaphor from space. Just because space and time are talked about in a similar way, does not necessarily mean that they share deeper conceptual similarities. To claim that our understanding of time was shaped by our understanding of space, it is at least necessary to demonstrate that space and time have similar relational structure, and that spatial schemas could, in principle, be used to organize time.

So, can people use spatial schemas to think about time? If they can, then it should be possible to differentially prime particular spatial schemas to affect how people think about time. The following experiment examines whether making people think about spatial relations in a particular way might affect how they then think about time. First, participants answered several priming questions about spatial relations of objects in pictures. These pictures used either the ego-moving or the object-moving spatial schemas. Then, participants interpreted an ambiguous temporal statement such as ‘Next Wednesday's meeting has been moved forward two days’. If the above statement is interpreted using the ego-moving schema, then forward is in the direction of motion of the observer, and the meeting should now fall on a Friday. In the time-moving interpretation, however, forward is in the direction of motion of time, and the meeting should now be on a Monday.5

If space and time do share some relational structure, then participants primed in the ego-moving spatial perspective should be able to reuse this perspective for time, and should thus think that the meeting will be on Friday. Participants primed in the object-moving perspective should prefer the time-moving interpretation and think that the meeting will be on Monday. However, if the domains of space and time do not share any relational structure, then spatial primes should have no effect on the way participants think about time.

Section snippets

Participants

Ninety-eight Stanford University undergraduates participated in this study as part of a course requirement.

Materials and design

A two-page questionnaire was constructed. The first page contained four TRUE/FALSE priming questions. Priming questions were spatial scenarios consisting of a picture and a sentence description. The scenarios used either the ego-moving frame of reference (see Fig. 2a), or the object-moving frame of reference (see Fig. 2b), and were shown to different participants. These two frames of

Experiment 2

In Experiment 2 participants answered ambiguous questions about spatial and temporal scenarios. Each target question followed several prime questions that used either the ego-moving schema or the object/time-moving schema. For some of the participants, spatial primes preceded target questions about time. For others, temporal primes preceded target questions about space. This manipulation was designed to investigate whether spatial schemas are necessarily accessed in thinking about time. There

Predictions

To be consistent with the results of Experiment 2, there should be an asymmetry in consistency effects between space and time. There should be greater effects of consistency when the transfer is from space to time, than from time to space.

These predictions can be accommodated by both the weak Metaphorical Structuring View and the Generic Schema View. However, according to the Generic Schema View, the asymmetry in relational priming between space and time is due to space being more closely

General discussion

Results of three experiments show that the domains of space and time share relational structure. It appears that spatial schemas can be used as easily as temporal schemas to think about time; however, access to spatial schemas is not required for thinking about time. These findings support the weak Metaphoric Structuring View, and contradict several plausible alternatives.

First, based on previous evidence from Gentner et al. (1999), and McGlone and Harding (1998), it was possible to reject the

Conclusions

Results presented in this paper suggest that similarities between space and time in language have deeper conceptual underpinnings. Three experiments showed that space and time share enough relational structure to allow spatial schemas to be used as easily as temporal schemas to organize events in time. Further, recent cross-linguistic evidence shows that if spatiotemporal metaphors differ, so do people's conceptions of time. This suggests that using spatiotemporal metaphors causes spatial

Acknowledgements

The research presented in this paper was supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Partial support was also provided by NIMH research grant MH-47575 to Gordon Bower. I would like to thank Gordon Bower, Herbert Clark, Dedre Gentner, Michael Ramscar, and Barbara Tversky for many valuable discussions and comments on earlier versions of this paper. Portions of this paper have been presented at the 19th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society at

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