Cognitive Explorations On The Psychological Reality Of Fictive Motion In Disciplinary Discourse Of Science

Fictive motion sentences use dynamic terms to depict static entities.In recent years,fictive motion itself alone has been studied by many researches,involving theoretical analyses,psychological experiments and cross-linguistically comparative discussions.However,the practical use and application of fictive motion in different subject areas have been rarely explored.Lakoff and Nunez(2000)mention mathematics abounds with fictive motion expressions.What's more,it is also believed that fictive motion promotes people's comprehension of mathematical ideas and concepts(Nunez,2006;Keane,2007).On this basis,it remains a question whether it is a universal phenomenon that fictive motion acts are used in science areas to depict or explain scientific concepts,and further,whether the employed fictive motion expressions are still "active" and "alive".Therefore,this thesis attempts to explore how fictive motion functions in other disciplines of science than mathematics as well as differences of fictive motion phenomena across disciplines.Based on the definition and taxonomy proposed by Talmy(2000a),the authentic fictive motion expressions are collected from three textbooks of physics,geography and economics and classified into different types.Furthermore,the collected data are analyzed across disciplines from the perspective of motion event theory(Talmy,2000b).Finally,the present research tries to examine the dynamism of these fictive motion expressions with the help of gesture theories.And a simple but effective experiment is carried out,during which the participants' gesture production will be documented and further analyzed mainly in terms of the phase of preparation,stroke and recovery.The findings of this research indicate that,firstly,the characteristics of fictive motion expressions with different subject backgrounds(in different disciplines)vary from each other:their Figures are sometimes concrete,sometimes imaginary or even metaphorical,and they prefer motion verbs with different properties which sometimes contain path or manner information,and sometimes just depict general motion.Secondly,the ways of fictive motion's application to the three disciplines are different.In economics,it has become the main method to construct and impart knowledge,while in physics and geography,it plays a marginal role.Thirdly,despite the fact that there are several differences among the fictive motion expressions in three disciplines of science,the gesture study here evidences full psychological and cognitive reality for their dynamism across disciplines.And the statistics and analyses can help us come to the conclusion that the fictive motion expressions from the three disciplines of science are still "alive".This study extends the observation of fictive motion's application to other disciplines of science on one hand,and proves that fictive motion still remains its nature of being conceptualized as motion on the other hand.In addition,the present research indicates that the phenomenon of fictive motion is commonly used in disciplinary discourse of science to depict or explain scientific concepts or terms,and the materials collected in this study will lay a sound foundation for further experimental study about fictive motion's role in facilitating knowledge learning and understanding.