Study on time and gesture in the Aymara gets Digg.com recognition
One of my priorities for my first year at UC Merced is to study how people perceive time. Time is my favorite pet project and I hope others in the department will have some feedback on my experiments. Therefore, I wanted to point the scsgrads toward some recent cross-linguistic work on language and time in the Aymara tribe in Northern Chile.
The reason why Rafael Núñez and Eve Sweetser are studying this group is because they hypothesize that they have a reversed metaphorical mapping of time. In contrast to most cultures where the past is behind and the future is ahead, the Aymara perceive the future behind and the past ahead of themselves. The differences in gestures among the Aymara and most other cultures are indeed interesting, however, what I will be presenting this Fall will give conceptual metaphor theory some trouble and at the same time provide a stronger basis regarding how embodiment theory handles time as well as other abstract concepts.
I also would like to encourage readers to read the comments on digg and please send me an email or post any news or articles on time.
posted by Ray at 11:19 AM
2 Comments:
Are you implying that there are other ways of thinking about time than linearly, such that the evidence is also embodied? that's a song and dance I'd like to see.
6:08 PM
That is at least one difference which cross-cultural studies have not addressed. Certainly, that is a good study to do soon after I finish up a couple more English-speaking experiments next Fall.
ps. Stop giving away my ideas Monica ;)
10:02 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home