The Gestural Expression of Spatial Metaphors for Affective Valence in Chinese

This study systematically explores the spatial representation of affective valence in Chinese native speakers from a co-speech gesture perspective.The results show that:1) up/down, front/back, left/right and big/small can be used to form emotional gestures, which highlights the important role of spatial experience in human conceptual system; 2) the commonness of body structure and the interaction between body and the world are the important motivations for emotional metaphors; 3) cultural schemas can influence the association between mind and body and further intensify or change the embodied effect of emotional metaphors, showing the contextual effect of human cognition.The research shows that emotional metaphors can be expressed via gestures, providing evidence for the psychological reality of conceptual metaphor.