Going to space

A cross-linguistic study using electronic corpora

Abstract

Motion between earth and outer space can be construed in different ways in different languages. The aim of this study is to identify all prepositional constructions used to describe motion from earth to space in English and Swedish and investigate how they contribute to different conceptualizations of earth, space, and the journey in between. It also aims to highlight some challenges of using corpora for cross linguistic research. The data was collected from Corpus of Contemporary American English and Korp and analyzed through the lenses of image-schema and construal. The study shows that there are many ways to construe this type of motion in both languages. Different parts of the journey can be put into focus, and earth and space can be construed in different ways, depending on the perspective of the speaker. The most common constructions in both languages focus on the goal and construe earth and/or space as containers.