Year: 2023
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The goal of this study was to revisit the nature and role of image schemata in language use. Image schemas have often been thought to be low-level quasi-primitives that structure much of language and thought (Johnson, 1987; Oakley 2010). Over the years, they have been studied by cognitive scientists who are interested in the semantics of language, both literal and non-literal. In this study, we queried naive participants’ intuitions about various verbs in everyday English sentences. The events they denoted have various visuospatial orientations: horizontal, vertical, or some combination or modification of those orientations. The results of our survey, which follow on earlier work (Richardson, Spivey, Edelman & Naples, 2001), show robust consistency among people’s intuitions and provide further insights into how image schemas work, in particular, how they are dynamic, flexible, and combine to create meaning.
Author: Michael James Spivey
Institution: University of California, Merced
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4384133299