TIME-SPACE MAPPING IN ARABIC-ENGLISH BILINGUALS 1 Writing direction and language activation affect how Arabic-English bilingual speakers map time onto space
Juana Park
Christina Gagne
Thomas L. Spalding- 1American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
- 2University of Alberta, Canada
We investigated whether writing direction and language activation influence how bilingual speakers map time onto space. More specifically, we investigated how Arabic-English bilingual speakers conceived where (e.g., on the left or on the right) different time periods (e.g., past, present, future) were located, depending on whether they were tested in Arabic (a language that is written from right to left) or in English (a language that is written from left to right). To analyze this, participants were given a task that involved arranging cards depicting different scenes of a story in chronological order. Results show that, when tested in Arabic, participants were significantly more likely to use right-to-left arrangements (following the Arabic writing direction), compared to when tested in English.
Keywords: metaphor, time, space, Arabic, Bilingual, writing direction
Received: 14 Dec 2023;
Accepted: 27 Dec 2023.
Copyright: © 2023 Park, Gagne and Spalding. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dr. Juana Park, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates