Navigating the Time-Space Motion Scene: Life-River Blends Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas ([email protected]) https://sites.google.com/site/cristobalpagancanovas/ Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University 605 Crawford Hall, 10900 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH 44106 USA. Department of Classics, University of Murcia, Campus de la Merced, 30001 Murcia, Spain Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego

Max Jensen ([email protected]) Cognitive Linguistics and World Literature Programs, Case Western Reserve University

Keywords: time-space mappings, generic templates of conceptual integration, image schemas, emotion.

The Time-Space Motion Scene Instantiated in Life-River Blends The set of mappings from the domain of space to that of time has been termed the “fruit fly” of linguistic and psychological tests of relationships between metaphorical domains (Casasanto, 2009). Conceptual Metaphor Theory has proposed ontological mappings from space onto time, with a fixed set of inferences, such as LIFE IS A JOURNEY (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1993). However, recent research in conceptual blending (Fauconnier & Turner 2002) shows that this mapping rather relies on successive integrations of mental spaces into blended simulations rendering a very particular motion scene, where spatial properties are determined by pre-existing temporal relations, their representational needs, and rhetorical objectives (Fauconnier & Turner, 2008; Coulson & Pagán Cánovas, forthcoming). This motion scene (particularly well illustrated by Boroditsky 2000) is used both in entrenched and novel metaphors. The most creative examples expose a much more flexible pattern of conceptual mappings than experiments or the analysis of isolated sentences might show. In a recent study (Pagán Cánovas & Jensen, forthcoming) we examine, among others, the instantiation of the temporal motion scene as a river. We show how the main elements of LIFE IS A JOURNEY (traveler, path, journey, etc.) can become integrated with different elements of the linear-motion scene, to serve different rhetoric purposes. We also show how perspective taking (ego-moving, timemoving, external viewpoint) may vary depending on the affective meaning to be construed. Rather than a fixed set of cross-domain projections, the emergent meanings resulting from both conventional and novel time-space metaphors are better explained as arising from an integrated mental simulation containing a blended time-motion scene, itself connected to a complex network of mappings. The principles of conceptual integration, and the early developmental origins of such motion scenes (Mandler 2010), account for the ease with which we navigate and change perspective in LIFE-RIVER and other time-space blends, adjusting temporal meanings to context and goals.

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