engleski

The Metaphorization of Space in Speech and Gesture

Cognition and spoken language are fundamentally imbued with spatiality to the point that they seem to create or re-create a spatial world of their own. The structuring of space serves as a basis for the structuring of other areas of cognition and spoken language expression, such as temporality, abstract notions, and relationships, the experience of which is neither so vivid nor so direct as the spatial experience. Thus our thinking is often based on spatial categories, and this use of spatial categories in languages is largely culture specific. Metaphorization has a converging effect on two notions that belong to different categories but which share one or more common characteristics. With the development of cognitive linguistics, the metaphor is no longer considered merely as a literary device or as an ornamental rhetorical figure of speech, but rather as an essential part of cognition and spoken expression. Thus, positive or negative emotions toward somebody can be related to spatial closeness or distance (a close friend, a distant acquaintance) ; states and abstract notions are often attributed the spatial dimensions of containers (deep trouble, empty words) ; and temporal relations are often spatially expressed (e.g. A lot of new Internet companies are here today and gone tomorrow). Examples of metaphorization are observed in words as well as in the gestures that co-occur with speech. The speaker´s gesticulatory space becomes a ground for the demonstration of spatiotemporal coordinates as well as for the objectification of abstract notions and their interrelations. Speech gestures show the indivisibility of the outside world's spatiality and abstract cognitive linguistic spatiality.

Metaphor, space, spoken language, utterance, speech gesture

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