Abstract

People use information from space to think and talk about time. This is evident in the different modalities we use to express time. We say things like “Let us leave everything behind,” produce hand gestures that point forward while talking about the future, or consistently organize graphical representations of time from left to right. These uses are instances of spatial metaphors of time, and they are related to many concepts, like how we view ourselves with respect to time, or focus on certain portions of time, like the past and the future.

In this talk, I will present three of my studies concerning how Turkish–English bilinguals gesture when they talk about time, how Turkish speakers represent temporal events on a graphical reproduction of time depending on how the events were communicated to them, and how Turkish speakers represent themselves and temporal events when they talk about time. Based on my findings, I will also suggest some potential avenues for future research.