汉、英讲话者对“前”、“后”时空隐喻的偏好及其成因

Chinese and English Speakers' Preferences of “Front/Back” Spatio-temporal Metaphors and Their Motivations

尽管时空隐喻广泛存在于世界上不同的语言和文化中,但不同语言讲话者对其选择却可能存在偏好。本文通过两个实验,考察了汉、英讲话者对"前"、"后"时空隐喻的偏好及其成因。实验1表明,在内隐任务中,汉语讲话者倾向于采取"时间在动"隐喻,英语讲话者倾向于采用"自我在动"隐喻。实验2采用5点量表测定法,发现汉语讲话者更为看重与过去相关的事物,英语讲话者更为看重与未来相关的事物。整个研究表明,汉、英讲话者的时空隐喻选择偏好和心理时间朝向符合"文化说"的基本假设。

Although spatio-temporal metaphors are prevalent in different languages and cultures throughout the world,different language speakers may demonstrate their own preferences for the choice of spatio-temporal metaphors. In this study,two experiments were conducted to explore Chinese speakers and English speakers' preferences of 'front / back'spatio-temporal metaphors and their causes. Experiment One show ed that the Chinese speakers in the implicit task tended to adopt the 'time moving 'metaphor,while the English speakers tended to use the 'ego moving 'metaphor. Experiment Tw o adopted a 5-point scale and revealed that the Chinese native speakers focused more attention on the entities related to the past,while the English speakers focused more attention on the entities related to the future. Taken together,the whole research indicates that the Chinese and English speakers' preferences and mental time orientations conform to the basic hypothesis of 'Cultural Account'.