culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

METAPHORICAL THOUGHT IN CULTURE:
THE ISSUE OF TIME IN ROMANIAN
misfortunes through which he had passed, “He left behind all the misfortunes he
had passed through”)
The only case in the literature of a mapping where future seems to be
metaphorically in back of ego, whereas past appears to be in front of ego 3 is the
Aymara language, an Amerindian language spoken in the Andean highlands of
Bolivia, Peru and Chile. The Aymara also feel time as motion but for them
speakers face the past and have their backs to the future. Linguistic evidence for
this is the Aymara word for ‘tomorrow’ which literally means ‘some day behind
one’s back’. In a language so reliant on eyewitness, it is not surprising that the
speaker metaphorically faces on what he has already seen: the past. It is even
logical, Lakoff believes.
Actually, this viewing arrangement of time is shared by other languages
such as Maori (Maori speakers use front-type words to signify events happened
earlier), Toba (a language spoken in Taos Pueblo, northern New Mexico in the
United States) and Malagasy (a language of the Malayo-Polynesian group, the
national language of Madagascar). Malagasy uses the expression ‘in front of the
eyes’ to describe past events and ‘behind’ to describe future events. As Radden
(2006: 216) argues, this arrangement of time is exceptional among the languages
of the world but nevertheless well-motivated: we can see or know the past (cf.
SEEING IS KNOWING metaphorical mapping) but not the future. When asked
why the future comes from behind, one of Dahl’s informants (1995: 198) gives
the following interesting explanation: “the future is totally unknown and behind
because none of us have eyes in the back of our head”.
The most basic metaphor in which the ego is co-locational with the present
is facing toward the future and has the past behind him, is referred to as The
Time Orientation Metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 74). Linguistic
expressions that instantiate this metaphorical mapping, include:
English: That’s all behind us. Let’s put that in back of us. We’re looking ahead
to the future. He has a great future in front of him.
Romanian: De aici înainte nu va mai fi aşa. (‘From now on it won’t be the
same’). Cu douăzeci de ani în urmă nu era mai bine. (‘Twenty years ago it
wasn’t better’). Ceasul merge în urmă cu cincisprezece minute. (‘The clock is
fifteen minutes behind’)
Generally, in Western cultures, the horizontal front-back orientation 4
predominates in temporal arrangements: “We do not see a vertical or lateral
movement in processing temporal expressions such as this coming month, the
days gone by or the following week, i.e. we do not visualize a month approaching
from above or from the left side”. (Radden 2006: 212).
Some languages, such as Mandarin, make use of the vertical spatial axis to
conceptualize time: earlier times are viewed as’ up’ and later times as ‘down’.
For example, shanyue (up month) means ‘last month’ and xyayue (down month)
means ‘next month’.
However, there are instances showing that sometimes, Western cultures
may also conceptualize earlier time as ‘up’ and later time as ‘down’ as in These
139