Time, Metaphor, and Language : A Cognitive Science Perspective

Time is fundamental to human experience; we live through it and, thus, seek to better understand it – often by way of metaphor. By bringing together research from across disciplines, this pioneering book explores the array of interacting factors that together give rise to our metaphoric understanding of time.

Across languages, time tends to be understood in terms of space. For instance, we might think of time as an unstoppable train heading towards us when we hear 'holidays are coming', or we might imagine time as a landscape that we move across as we 'approach the moment of truth'. In this pioneering book, Duffy and Feist bring together research from across disciplines to provide a more nuanced understanding of what metaphor is and how it underpins our conceptualizations of time. Illustrated with a wide range of authentic examples from natural language, the book offers a holistic understanding of metaphors for time, encompassing the varied ways in which people draw on spatial experiences, as well as the broader variety of 'human experience' on an individual level. In doing so, it highlights the importance of variation across cultures, across contexts, and across individuals for metaphoric conceptualization.