A Study Of The Metaphor Relationship Between Power And Vertical Space

Power always exists in a certain amount of social relations,and related with our lives. In recent years, power is becoming more and more popular topic, people begin to focus on the impact of power brought whether the good aspects or the bad side. The research of power will help people to understand deeply about how the power works. People can find the power’s regular that influenced in different aspects from the researches. And ultimately turn the bad influence into good to accommodate the needs of the society.The research focus on the relationship between the concept of power and the vertical space, and try to discover the regular that the relationship between vertical space and power. Assuming that the metaphors linking has been existed between power and vertical space,and the mapping of the vertical spatial metaphor of power is bidirectional. In other words, vertical space can mapping to the concept of power, which means the relations are more closer between high power and the higher position of the space. And concept of power also can mapping to the vertical space, which means people will more easier to understand the meaning of power when they in the higher position of the space. Experiment 1, try to explore the connection of the vertical space and the concept of power. The result shows that metaphorical link is exist between the concept of power and vertical space. Experiment 2, try to discuss the mapping of source domain to target domain. Asked subjects to choose the Greek word, presented in the area up or down of the screen, that match with the Chinese word in the middle of the screen. It is turn out that subjects tend to choose the upper Greek word when the high power word appears. On the contrary, subject tend to choose the lower Greek Word when the low power word appears. Experiment 3, continue to explore that mapping from target domain to source domain. At first, activate the concept of spatial by using arrow, then give a high or low power word, record subjects’ reaction time. The results show that the concept of space can facilitated the judgment of the power. It means when the arrow of clue appears at the top of the screen, subjects’ reaction time of judge the high power word is shorter than the low power word. Experiment 2 and 3 prove that the mapping of vertical space and the power is bidirectional.The results prove that:(1) there is exist that the psychological reality of vertical spatial metaphor and power.(2) the mapping of the vertical spatial metaphor of power is bidirectional.