Dr. Bahareh Mansoory (University of Vienna)
Title: Body, Language, and Space: How Our World is Shaped Through Metaphors
Date and time: October 31, 13:00
Location: Sala de Conferencias 1 (CIMCYC)
Abstract: Conceptual metaphors are like windows through which the mind views the world. But are we all looking through the same window? This lecture will discuss how our body characteristics and language patterns can influence these metaphors. We'll focus particularly on spatial metaphors and how directions in space are linked to positive and negative valence in our minds. According to the body-specificity hypothesis, our bodily experiences shape these associations: right-handed people tend to associate positive concepts with the right side, while left-handers lean toward the left. This contrasts with common patterns in spoken languages, where 'good' is linked to the right and 'bad' to the left—after all, who doesn’t want to always be right? In this lecture, we'll discuss recent studies comparing individuals across different languages and physical characteristics to examine these spatial metaphors, with a particular focus on sign languages. We'll look at whether deaf people show different space-valence associations compared to hearing people.