Horizontal Spatial Metaphor Representation of Social Status in Chinese Culture

The mapping relationship between social status and horizontal space (left/right) in Chinese culture has a long history. In order to explore the representation pattern of horizontal spatial metaphor of social status in Chinese culture, this study introduced two direct measurements, implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) paradigm, and spatial placement task to evaluate the mapping of social status to horizontal space. A total of 144 Chinese undergraduates participated in the research, wherein they were asked to place certain words indicating social status in either left or right box before or after the IRAP computer test. The results from the two measurements consistently showed that the mode of HIGH SOCIAL STATUS-LEFT and LOW SOCIAL STATUS-RIGHT (HLLR) had an advantage over HIGH SOCIAL STATUS-RIGHT and LOW SOCIAL STATUS-LEFT (HRLL), implying that the representation pattern of horizontal spatial metaphor of social status for the Chinese is HIGH SOCIAL STATUS-LEFT and LOW SOCIAL STATUS-RIGHT. However, the result convergence of the two measurements was not high, which suggests that embodiment effect has multiple characteristics and new specific experimental paradigms should be created to measure it.

From the tool to the spatial metaphor: Graphical user interface and audiovisual creation in new media

This article is set within a technological paradigm shift that denotes a transition from hardware to software and that, by means of applications and operating systems, plays a central role in the sociocultural sphere, intervening in the creation, classification and distribution of cultural objects. The aim of this research is to delve into how the graphical user interface (GUI) integrates into contemporary audiovisual discourse, focusing on its potential as a spatial metaphor. To that end, a theoretical framework is built on the concept of space as a tool and its instrumentalization in the GUI throughout the years, with a view to design a taxonomy in relation to the different ways in which the GUI integrates into digital image composition. The article concludes that the ability to operate in the virtual and physical space, moving between the logic of the tool and its potential as spatial metaphor, provides the GUI with the necessary specificity to be considered a key cultural element for analysing new media’s visual identity.

Competing with Urban Verticality: Cinematic Landscapes in Seediq Bale and Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above

While buildings strive to reach higher and higher, cities are obsessed with a visible expression of verticality. Seediq Bale (2011) and Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above (2013) represent a new development in Taiwan’s cinematic use of landscape that challenges the dominance of urban verticalism. Seediq Bale sets up an alternative vertical dimension of mountainous areas that puts into dialogical relationship the dichotomies of civilised/barbarous, advanced/primitive, and vertical/horizontal. Audiences no longer experience space in a traditional manner, as eventually Mona Rudao’s graveyard is undiscovered/undefined. Beyond Beauty, on the other, asks viewers to ‘go higher’, encouraging a break with ordinary experience for a more spiritual quest like aerial shots. As both offer a sense of disorientation and alienation, what does the spatial metaphor address to aesthetics, ecocriticism, politics of identity, and sovereignty in geography? What are the implications as cinematic landscapes extend into a real-life environment that is ready to be consumed?

Spatial Parametrization as a Basis of Conceptual Metaphor In the Language of W. Shakespeare

В статье рассматривается когнитивная основа формирования пространственной метафоры в языке У. Шекспира. Исходя из накопленного опыта в изучении категоризации, концептуализации и вербализации пространства описаны возможные способы интерпретации пространственных (ориентационных) метафор, передаваемых предложными конструкциями. Пространственная параметризация человеком окружающего мира, его первичный опыт взаимодействия с окружающим миром рассматриваются как когнитивная основа для формирования универсальных когнитивных моделей, лежащих в основе пространственных метафор. Модели, репрезентирующие физическое пространство, легко переходят в ментальные пространства, передавая разнообразные абстрактные отношения, что и происходит, в частности, при создании пространственной метафоры. Многочисленные примеры доказывают, что явление метафорического переосмысления пространственных предлогов отнюдь не редко у Шекспира, а, напротив, является отражением его индивидуального мировосприятия, которое в конечном итоге отражается и в неповторимости стиля. Образность и экспрессивность, порождаемые пространственной метафорой, как правило, создают проблемы при переводе, поскольку иной язык накладывает определенные ограничения на буквальное воссоздание авторского образа. В случае с пространственными метафорами замена когнитивной модели (базового образа) не столь существенна по сравнению с полной утратой метафоричности, что значительно снижает экспрессивность в целом. The article discusses the cognitive base of spatial metaphors in the language of W. Shakespeare. Relying on the accumulated experience in the study of categorization, conceptualization and verbalization of space, the author suggests ways of interpreting spatial (orientational) metaphors conveyed by prepositional constructions. Man’s spatial parametrization of the surrounding world, his primary experience in interacting with the environment is regarded as a cognitive base of universal cognitive models which underlie spatial metaphors. Models representing physical space easily pass into mental spaces, conveying various abstract relations, which happens when a spatial metaphor appears. Numerous examples prove that metaphorical use of spatial prepositions is by no means rare in Shakespearean texts. On the contrary, is arises from his individual perception of the world, which ultimately results in the uniqueness of style. Figurativeness and expressiveness generated by spatial metaphor is a challenge in translation, since another language imposes certain restrictions on literal ‘verbal imitation’ of the author's image. As for spatial metaphors, а change of their cognitive model (base image) is a more acceptable loss as compared to the loss of figurativeness, which crucially reduces expressiveness.

Soundworld Spatiality and the Unheroic Self-Giving of Jesus Christ

This chapter argues that the spatial metaphor of resonant ‘edgeless difference’, which arises from our perception of musical sound, makes more conceptualizable a vision of kenotic freedom which the New Testament understands to be embodied in Jesus Christ and made accessible through the Spirit, to the glory of the Father. This proposal is briefly explored in conversation with the Christology and theological aesthetics of Rowan Williams (1950–), who works within a kenotic idiom. We discover that a conceptuality borne of musical phenomenology can liberate Christological grammar from modernist strongholds and can direct our attention to the multiple, interconnected freedoms of the New Creation (i.e., the cosmic, ecclesiological, and individual). In so doing, it supports the idea that a Christ-centred kenotic theory of self-emptying provides a radical alternative to certain modernist views of freedom.

A Corpus-Based Comparison of the Pragmatic Use of Qian and Hou to Examine the Applicability of Space–Time Metaphor Hypothesis in Early Child Mandarin

The Universal Space–Time Mapping Hypothesis suggests that temporal expression is based on spatial metaphor for all human beings. This study examines its applicability in the Chinese language using the data elicited from the Early Childhood Mandarin Corpus (ECMC) (Li and Tse, 2011), which collected the utterances produced by 168 Mandarin-speaking preschoolers in a semistructured play context. The unique pair of Chinese words, qian (前/before/front) and hou (后/after/back), which can be used to express either time (before/after) or space (front/back) in daily communication, was the unit of analysis. The results indicated that: (1) there was a significant age effect in the production of “qian/hou,” indicating that the period before the age of 4.5 may be critical for the development of temporal and spatial expression; (2) the pair was produced to express time (before/after) much earlier than space (front/back), indicating that the expression of time might not necessarily be based on the spatial metaphor; and (3) the pair was used more frequently to express time (before/after) than space (front/back) by the preschoolers, thus challenging the hypothesis.

Literary dialect as social deixis

The representation of non-standard and regional accent and dialect in literary fiction has been framed mainly sociolinguistically and treated as an index of authenticity, within an account of characterisation. The reader’s attitude to such speakers in literary fiction is manipulated narratorially and authorially. Since readerly effects, impressions and evaluations are the key issues involved, it seems plausible that a cognitive poetic approach to the reading of dialect in literature would also be productive. In the current deictic theory, the dimension of social deixis captures a broad range of stylistic features including register and dialectal representations. Cognitive deictic theory draws on an explicitly spatial metaphor in which characters are positioned in conceptual space. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the effect of readerly positioning and dispositioning. This article revisits social deixis and its points of transition and textural variation from a theoretical perspective. It develops a new angle on the representation and significance of accented and dialectal forms in literary fiction, with some illustrative examples drawn from 19th and 20th century British novels.