Cover not available
Article published In:
Gesture
Vol. 16:3 (2017) ► pp.396–415

Time on hands

Deliberate and spontaneous temporal gestures by speakers of Mandarin

| Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, and Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
The present study investigates deliberate and spontaneous temporal gestures in Mandarin speakers. The results of our analysis show that when asked to gesture about past and future events deliberately (Study 1), Mandarin speakers tend to mimic space-time mappings in their spoken metaphors or graphic conventions for time in Chinese culture, including sagittal mappings (front/past, back/future), vertical mappings (up/past, down/future), and lateral mappings (left/past, right/future). However, in their spontaneous co-speech gestures about time (Study 2), more congruent gestures were produced on the lateral axis than on the vertical axis. This suggests that although Mandarin speakers could think about time vertically, they still showed a horizontal bias in their conceptions of time. Speakers were also more likely to gesture according to future-in-front mappings despite more past-in-front mappings found in spoken Chinese, suggesting a dissociation of temporal language and temporal thought. These results demonstrate that gesture is useful for revealing the spatial conceptualization of time.
Keywords: space, time, metaphor, Mandarin, gesture
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Study 1. Deliberate temporal gestures
    • Methods
      • Participants
      • Materials and procedure
      • Coding and reliability
    • Results and discussion
  • Study 2. Spontaneous temporal gestures
    • Methods
      • Participants
      • Materials
      • Procedure
      • Coding
    • Results and discussion
  • General discussion
    • Why temporal language and deliberate temporal gesture go hand in hand
    • Spontaneous gestures by Mandarin speakers
      • Lateral gestures
      • Vertical gestures
      • Sagittal gesture
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 1 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.00002.li
References (47)
References
Ahrens, Kathleen & Chu-Ren Huang (2002). Time passing is motion. Language & Linguistics, 31, 491–519.Google Scholar
Alverson, Hoyt (1994). Semantics and experience: Universal metaphor of time in English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Sesotho. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Bergen, Benjamin & Ting Ting Chan Lau (2012). Writing direction affects how people map space onto time. Frontiers in psychology, 31, 109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boroditsky, Lera (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of time. Cognitive psychology, 43 (1), 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Calbris, Geneviève (2011). Elements of meaning in gesture. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasanto, Daniel (2016). Temporal language and temporal thinking may not go hand in hand. In (Ed.), Conceptualizations of time (pp. 67–84). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Casasanto, Daniel & Kyle Jasmin (2012). The hands of time: Temporal gestures in English speakers. Cognitive Linguistics, 231, 643–674. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, Jenn-Yeu (2007). Do Chinese and English speakers think about time differently? Failure of replicating Boroditsky (2001). Cognition, 1041, 427–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, Jenn-Yeu & Padraig O’Seaghdha (2013). Do Mandarin and English speakers think about time differently? Review of existing evidence and some new data. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 411, 338–358.Google Scholar
Chui, Kawai (2011). Conceptual metaphors in gesture. Cognitive Linguistics, 22 (3), 437–458. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cienki, Alan (1998). Metaphoric gestures and some of their relations to verbal metaphorical expressions. In Jean-Pierre Koenig (Ed.), Discourse and cognition: Bridging the gap (pp. 189–204). Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert (1973). Space, time, semantics, and the child. In Timothy E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 27–63). New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooperrider, Kensy & Rafael Núñez (2009). Across time, across the body: Transversal temporal gestures. Gesture, 91, 181–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooperrider, Kensy, Rafael Núñez, & Eve Sweetser (2014). Temporal gesture. In Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, & Jana Bressem (Eds.), Body – language – communication (Vol. 21, pp. 1781–1788). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
de la Fuente, Juanma, Julio Santiago, Antony Román, Cristina Dumitrache, & Daniel Casasanto (2014). When you think about it, your past is in front of you: How culture shapes spatial conceptions of Time. Psychological Science, 251, 1682–1690. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Sousa, Hilário (2012). Generational differences in the orientation of time in Cantonese. Frontiers in Psychology, 31, 255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duffy, Sarah (2014). The role of cultural artifacts in the interpretation of metaphorical expressions about time. Metaphor and Symbol, 29 (2), 94–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Vyvyan (2004). The structure of time: Language, meaning, and temporal cognition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gu, Yan, Lisette Mol, Marieke Hoetjes, & Marc Swerts (2013). What can Chinese speakers’ temporal gestures reveal about their thinking about time? In Proceedings of the Tilburg Gesture Research Meeting (TiGeR 2013) (The combined meeting of the 10th international Gesture Workshop (GW) and the 3rd Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN) conference. Unknown Publisher).Google Scholar
(2014). Does language shape the production and perception of gestures? In Paul Bello, Marcello Guarini, Marjorie McShane, & Brian Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive science Society (pp. 547–552). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Gullberg, Marianne, Henriëtte Hendriks, & Maya Hickmann (2008). Learning to talk and gesture about motion in French. First Language, 281, 200–236. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin (1997). From space to time: Temporal adverbials in the world’s languages. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar
January, David & Edward Kako (2007). Re-evaluating evidence for linguistic relativity: Reply to Boroditsky (2001). Cognition, 1041, 417–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendon, Adam (1993). Space, time and gesture. Degres, 741, 3b–16b.Google Scholar
Kita, Sotaro & Aslı Özyürek (2003). What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal? Evidence for an interface representation of spatial thinking and speaking. Journal of Memory and Language, 48 (1), 16–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, & Mark Johnson (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Le Guen, Olivier, Pool Balam, & Lorena Ildefonsa (2012). No metaphorical timeline in gesture and cognition among Yucatec Mayas. Frontiers in Psychology, 31, 1–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeill, David (1992). Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(2005). Gesture and thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meier, Brian & Michael Robinson (2005). The metaphorical representation of affect. Metaphor and Symbol, 201, 239–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moore, Kevin Ezra (2006). Space to time mappings and temporal concepts. Cognitive Linguistics, 171, 199–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014). The spatial language of time: Metaphor, metonymy, and frames of reference. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Núñez, Rafael, Vicente Neumann, & Manuel Mamani (1997). Los mapeos conceptuales de la concepción del tiempo en la lengua Aymara del Norte de Chile [Conceptual mappings in the conceptualization of time in northern Chile’s Aymara]. Boletín de Educación de la Universidad Católica del Norte, 281, 47–55.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, 301, 401–450. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Núñez, Rafael & Kensy Cooperrider (2013). The tangle of space and time in human cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17 (5), 220–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Özyürek, Aslı & Sotaro Kita (1999). Expressing manner and path in English and Turkish: Differences in speech, gesture, and conceptualisation. In Martín Hahn & Scott Stoness (Eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 507–512). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Radden, Günter (2011). Spatial time in the West and the East. In Mario Brdar, Marija Omazic, Visnja Pavicic Takac, Tanja Gradecak-Erdeljic, & Gabrijela Buljan (Eds.), Space and time in language (pp. 1–40). Frankfurt-Main et al.: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Sanvido, Guilherme, Julio de Rose, & Jenn-Yeu Chen (2011). Chinese speakers do not think about time differently than Portuguese speakers. Poster presented at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Seattle, USA, November 3–6.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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talmy, Leonard (1985). Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In Timothy Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description (Vol. 31, pp. 57–149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tse, Chi-Shing & Jeanette Altarriba (2008). Evidence against linguistic relativity in Chinese and English: A case study of spatial and temporal metaphors. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 8 (3), 335–357. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walker, Esther & Kensy Cooperrider (2016). The continuity of metaphor: evidence from temporal gestures. Cognitive Science, 401, 481–495. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walker, Esther & Núñez Rafael (2016). Speaking, gesturing, reasoning. In Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Ed.), Conceptualizations of time (pp. 43–65). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Yu, Ning (1998). The contemporary theory of metaphor: A perspective from Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012). The metaphorical orientation of time in Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 441, 1335–1354. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (17)

Cited by 17 other publications

Athanasopoulos, Panos & Rui Su
2024. The Effect of COVID‐Related Quarantine and Attitudes on Time Conceptualization: Evidence From Temporal Focus and Implicit Space‐Time Mappings. Language Learning 74:S1 ► pp. 72 ff. DOI logo
Feist, Michele I. & Sarah E. Duffy
2023. Cognitive Science: Piecing Together the Puzzle. Cognitive Science 47:7 DOI logo
Feist, Michele I. & Sarah E. Duffy
2023. To each their own: a review of individual differences and metaphorical perspectives on time. Frontiers in Psychology 14 DOI logo
Li, Heng
2023. Personality in your hands: How extraversion traits influence preference for pointing in Chinese people. Australian Journal of Linguistics 43:2 ► pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Renqiang, Heng Li & Bo Yang
2023. The physics of time. Review of Cognitive Linguistics DOI logo
Yang, Yongfei, Chris Sinha & Luna Filipovic
2023. Sequential Time construal is primary in temporal uses of Mandarin Chinese qian ‘front’ and hou ‘back’. Language Sciences 95 ► pp. 101511 ff. DOI logo
Dyrmo, Tomasz
2022. Gestural metaphorical scenarios and coming out narratives. Metaphor and the Social World 12:1 ► pp. 23 ff. DOI logo
Gu, Yan
2022. Chapter 10. Time in Chinese hands. In Time Representations in the Perspective of Human Creativity [Human Cognitive Processing, 75], ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
Zhong, Lingli & Zhengguang Liu
2022. Metonymic event-based time interval concepts in Mandarin Chinese—Evidence from time interval words. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Sun, Juan & Qiang Zhang
2021. How do Mandarin speakers conceptualize time? Beyond the horizontal and vertical dimensions. Cognitive Processing 22:2 ► pp. 171 ff. DOI logo
Callizo-Romero, Carmen, Slavica Tutnjević, Maja Pandza, Marc Ouellet, Alexander Kranjec, Sladjana Ilić, Yan Gu, Tilbe Göksun, Sobh Chahboun, Daniel Casasanto & Julio Santiago
2020. Temporal focus and time spatialization across cultures. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 27:6 ► pp. 1247 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
Li, Heng & Yu Cao
2018. Karma or Immortality: Can Religion Influence Space‐Time Mappings?. Cognitive Science 42:3 ► pp. 1041 ff. DOI logo
LI, Heng & Yu CAO
2018. 时间焦点对前后方向上内隐时空映射的影响——来自汉族和羌族的证据. Acta Psychologica Sinica 50:10 ► pp. 1083 ff. DOI logo
Li, Heng & Yu Cao
2018. Time will tell: Temporal landmarks influence metaphorical associations between space and time. Cognitive Linguistics 29:4 ► pp. 677 ff. DOI logo
Li, Heng & Yu Cao
2019. Planning for the future: The relationship between conscientiousness, temporal focus and implicit space-time mappings. Personality and Individual Differences 141 ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
Li, Heng & Yu Cao
2022. Time for politics: The relationship between political attitude and implicit space-time mappings. Current Psychology 41:3 ► pp. 1184 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 october 2024. 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.