Chapter published in:
Motion and Space across Languages: Theory and applications
Edited by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano
[Human Cognitive Processing 59] 2017
► pp. 257–278

Crossing the road or crossing the mind

How differently do we move across physical and metaphorical spaces in speech and in gesture?

| Georgia State University
| Georgia State University
| Georgia State University
Physical motion constitutes a key aspect of human sensorimotor experience; it also serves as an important experiential domain with which we structure abstract concepts. Moreover, speakers of different languages both talk and gesture about physical motion (e.g. Boy runs through park) in systematically different ways – a pattern of crosslinguistic variation that also applies to metaphorical extensions of motion (e.g. Idea runs through mind). Review of existing research – with methods ranging from more explicit verbal descriptions to more implicit indices of underlying mental processes, including gesture – suggests that sensorimotor experience (i.e. physical motion) and the linguistic expression of this experience in a particular language may play important roles in shaping our expression and conceptualization of more abstract concepts (i.e. metaphorical motion).
Keywords: crosslinguistic variation, gesture, metaphorical motion, physical motion, spatial language
Published online: 14 August 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.59.11ozc
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