A Multidimensional Approach To Temporal Distance In Language

Temporal distance has been found influential on human responses which are meditated by mental construal,therein language is a typical representation.Previous scholars discovered linguistic signs of psychological distance,but simply as proofs of mental construal.The present study aims to offer further explorations from a linguistic perspective by including more potentially significant linguistic variables.Multi-dimensional analysis facilitates the operation of encapsulating a possible widest range of linguistic features and extracting underlying functional dimensions.It offers a feasible method to conclude how people make concrete language choices,in particular psychological contexts.MD analysis was first proposed by Biber to probe into register variation and showed great flexibility,and powerful ability to explore linguistic variations regarding different situational and social conditions.And the present study tries to expand its application in the psycholinguistic field.This study investigates linguistic variation between English texts marking different temporal distance using MD analysis.It tries to figure out the functional relationship between language and temporal distance.To achieve this purpose,it applies factor analysis on data extracted from the New York Times Annotated Corpus and generates three dimensions underlying the co-occurring patterns of 64 linguistic features.Dimension 1 was interpreted as "Reduced Discourse Complexity";Dimension 2 as"Conceptual Abstractness and Uncertainty",and Dimension 3 as "Textual Logical Relations".Correlations between temporal distance and three linguistic dimensions are illustrated and proved by comparing temporally varied dimension scores.Results confirm a positive correlation between temporal distance and discourse complexity,between temporal distance and conceptual abstractness/uncertainty.It also suggests that textual reference with close distance shows clearer logical relations in textual connection.And polynomial functions can adequately describe the correlations.The study also suggests a past and future distinction in abstract mental construal.This study combines the macro-and micro-approach using quantitative analysis,provides a practical base for the influence of temporal distance on natural language.It verifies and expands the multi-dimensional linguistic presentations of mental abstraction.The clear and broad linguistic manifestations of mental construal confirmed in the present study,are expected to have impacts on every discussed topic in the real-world settings.It also enriches construal level theory,and adds a new perspective for MD analysis.