Model for the Concept of Time in Persian Speaker's Minds: Based on Metaphoric Gestures

This paper presents a study examining how Persian speakers use metaphoric gestures to represent different adverbs of time، and what these gestures reveal about the concept of time in their minds. A questionnaire containing 10 ambiguous questions، which made the participant use different adverbs of time، was given to 22 participants. They were filmed while trying to answer the questions. The corpus resulting from the analyses contained 299 gestures، all of which were made by hands. Since the frequency of gestures made by other body parts، like head or body، was very low، they were omitted from the corpus. The analyses also showed that 8 main gestures were used to demonstrate different adverbs of time. They can be categorized into 3 groups: those referring to the past، to the present، and to the future. Further analyses revealed that Persian speakers have a horizontal mentality of time، from back to front، and right to left. Finally، a schema is suggested for the concept of time in their minds.