What is it about?
This study explores how Turkish speakers understand and talk about time using metaphors. Because time is an abstract concept, we often describe it using familiar ideas such as objects, movement, money and even living things. By analysing large collections of everyday language and poetry, this research identifies the most common ways in which Turkish speakers express time. The study shows that in everyday language, time is often treated as an object or a valuable resource, while in poetry, time is more likely to be described as a living being that moves and changes.
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Why is it important?
Metaphors shape the way we think. While studies have examined time metaphors in English and other major languages, Turkish has been less explored. This research fills this gap by systematically analysing time metaphors in Turkish. The findings reveal how different cultural and linguistic traditions influence our understanding of time. This study is also unique because it quantitatively and qualitatively compares everyday language with poetry in a custom-built large dataset, showing how creative writing expands our ways of thinking about time. Understanding these patterns can help translators, linguists and AI researchers better understand how language and thought are connected.
Perspectives
As a language researcher, I have always been fascinated by how language reflects our perception of the world. Time is something we all experience, but we struggle to define it. In this study, I wanted to see how Turkish speakers make sense of time in their everyday conversations and poetic expressions. The results were really interesting: while we often think of time as something we can count, save or waste, poetry allows us to see it as something alive - breathing, changing and even feeling. For me, this is also the first study in which I have used natural language processing tools in Python to compile and analyse large linguistic datasets. I hope this study will encourage further research into how different languages shape our experience of time, and inspire new ways of thinking about this universal yet mysterious concept.
Dr. Alper Kumcu
Hacettepe Universitesi
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: It's High Time, February 2025, IGI Global,
DOI: 10.4018/979-8-3693-8146-5.ch010.
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