Conceptualizing time through space-time metaphors: the case of llegar

Abstract

This study examines metaphoric expressions using the Spanish verb llegar (to arrive) through the conceptual integration model (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002). These metaphoric expressions were obtained from interviews to young professionals from the same socioeconomic level who live and work in Mexico City. These interviews were administered, as part of my doctoral research, to various groups of persons stratified by age. The main purpose is to find discursive strategies used by people to metaphorically create spatial-temporal conceptual frameworks in order to recount a project or an episode of their lives. In this study, I drafted one discursive strategy that is observed at a semantic level: the use of spatial linguistic components for referring to time. This is the case of metaphors involving the verb llegar used to narrate the changes that people underwent in their lives or the occurrence of an event. There are two types of examples in this study: metaphors that use a conjugated form of llegar and metaphors that use the periphrasis ir a + infinitivo (going to + infinitive verb). Subjects use these speech modalities to place themselves discursively as agents who perform the actions of reaching a certain age or stage in their lives, as well as to indicate the inevitable arrival of an event into their lives. Therefore, in this study I also explain both conceptualizations, which Boroditsky (2000) established as two modalities of the same event-related metaphor.