THE LINGUISTIC DIMENSION OF TEMPORAL PERCEPTION: A COGNITIVE AND CULTURAL APPROACH
THE LINGUISTIC DIMENSION OF TEMPORAL PERCEPTION: A COGNITIVE AND CULTURAL APPROACH

Summary/Abstract: The article examines how language structures temporal perception by integrating cognitive, cultural and semiotic perspectives on time. It argues that temporal experience is not a neutral, universal given, but a conceptual construct emerging from the interaction between embodied experience, social practices and symbolic imaginaries. Drawing on cognitive linguistics (conceptual metaphor theory, image schemas, frame semantics), anthropology of time and the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, the study analyses how different languages project time onto spatial, modal and axiological dimensions (horizontal vs. vertical axes, realis vs. irrealis, sacred vs. profane). Particular attention is paid to spatial metaphors of time (e.g. TIME AS MOTION, TIME AS A JOURNEY, TIME AS A RESOURCE), to linear and cyclical models of temporality, and to cross-cultural variations in temporal orientation (future “in front” vs. “behind”, vertical representations of past and future). The contrastive discussion of several linguistic and cultural areas shows that languages provide distinct “geometries” of time which influence the ordering, evaluation and memorisation of events. The article concludes that linguistic time cannot be reduced to objective chronology; rather, it functions as a cultural and social dimension through which communities negotiate identity, memory and horizons of expectation.

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