İnsanoğlu var olduğundan beri hayata dair kazandığı deneyimlerini, edindiği bilgileri kendi düşünce süzgecinden geçirerek onları yeniden yapılandırmış ve bu yapıları dilde özel bir ifade biçimi aracılığıyla kullanmıştır. Bu süreç, insanın düşünce yapısının temel işleyiş biçimi olarak bilinir. Yani, insanlar sahip olduğu bilgi ve tecrübelerini dildeki kelimeler aracılığıyla bir başka alana taşıyıp onların yeni anlamlar halinde tekrar ortaya çıkmasını sağlamışlardır. Dil bu tür işlevini kavramsal metaforlara dayanarak gerçekleştirmektedir. Metafor çalışmaları çok eski dönemlere dayanır. Kayıtlarda metafor üzerindeki ilk düşüncelerin Aristo tarafından dile getirildiği bilinir. Aristo milâttan önceki 350 yılında kaleme aldığı Poetics adlı eserinde dildeki metaforun doğasını analiz etmiş, ilk metafor kuramını ortaya koymuştur. Aristo'dan sonraki süreçte metafor bir dil kullanım sanatı olarak düşünülmüş ve edebi eserlerdeki metaforlar ağırlıklı olarak ele alınmıştır. 1980 yılında G. Lakoff ve M. Johnson metaforun sadece dilde değil, günlük hayatta düşüncemiz ve eylemlerimizde de yaygın olduğunu örneklerle kanıtlayan meşhur yapıtı Metaphors We Live by adlı eseri yayımlamışlardır. Eserde ortaya konulan kuramlar içerisinde metaforun kültür yönüyle ilgili görüşler de dikkat çekmektedir. Metaforların türleri ve içerikleri de kültürden etkilenmekte ve farklı dillerdeki metaforlar farklı kültür temelinde meydana gelmektedir. Bu eser metafor hakkındaki düşünce ve kuramları yeni boyuta taşımış, pek çok çalışmaya da kaynaklık etmiştir. Metafor konusunda daha sonra yapılan bütün çalışmalar düşünce-dil-kültürmetafor arasındaki ilişkileri tespit etme konusunda son derece önemli sonuçlar elde etmiştir. Bu çalışmada uzay/mekan deneyimlerinin Türk düşüncesinde nasıl algılandığı ve bu konuda edinilen bilgilerin dilde nasıl yapılandırıldığı, ne gibi kavramsal ifadelerle ortaya konulduğu konusu incelenmeye çalışılmakla birlikte, yönelim metaforların sergilediği kültürel farklılıklar ve benzerlikler ışığında, onların temellendirildiği kültürel zemin, kültürel gerçeklikler yönünden incelemeye tabi tutulması amaçlanmaktadır.

The knowledge and experiences accumulated by human beings in relation to our lives and our natural environment over the years, have been processed and reconstructed through our imagination and these reconstruction process is used as communication tools in languages. This process have been believed to be the most basic patterns of the human imagination system. People have been utilizing language to express knowledge and experiences, which over time, have evolved into new fields and given new meanings to allow their revival. This is achieved by conceptual metaphors. According to traditional view a metaphor in language, especially in literature, was known as as a rhetorical device in particular. After the discovery of American linguists Lakoff and Johnson who argued that “that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action” (Lakoff-Johnson 1980:3), the works dealing with the concept of metaphor on the basis of new theories began to be discussed with growing intensity. Lakoff and Johnson’s theories of metaphor have to a great extent influenced and accelerated the development of cognitive linguistics. One of the topics that attract attention is a cultural metaphor or culture-specific aspects of metaphorical conceptualization. Studies on the subject have achieved the most important findings on the relations between thought, language, culture and metaphor. This article aims to experiment and research on how the world of Turkic imagination have comprehended spatial knowledge and experiences and how it these experiences have been conceptualized in language. Orientational metaphors theory Orientational metaphors of space are expressed with concepts establishing the direction oriented relationship with respect to one another. Therefore, they are named as spatial metaphors or orientational metaphors. In such metaphors of space, directions within physical space constitute a source and target area. Accordingly, they are associated with concepts of spatial orientation as up-down, in-out, front-back, on-off, deep-shallow, central-peripheral (Lakoff-Johnson 1980:14-17). Lakoff and Johnson find these metaphors in references to spatial areas where people maintain their everyday lives and link their sources to human psychological and cultural experiences. For the same reason, distinctions between cultures are represented by the differences in metaphors. In Turkish, we can see many examples of orientational metaphors we use in everyday life. Idiomatic expressions like başı göğe ermek, mutluluktan uçmak, ayağı yere değmemek are used to express joy and/or happiness. These statements show that happiness in Turkish culture is perceived as rising up in the vertical direction. This means that in Turkish thinking or a mind HAPPINESS IS ON THE TOP AND UP (rising and elevating) while GRIEF AND SORROW IS DIRECTED DOWN AND BELLOW. If we look up the verb düşmek in the Turkish Dictionary, we can see that ‘fall’ or ‘falling’ is in the most cases connected to negative situations and circumstances (TS 422b-423a). All the negative phenomena in Turkish culture are generally associated with falling into place, lying down, or to be DOWN, UNDER OR BELOW. Although orientational metaphors display similarities between many human cultures they also represent a great variability of cultural differences. While the Chinese culture conceptualizes past as something above (or ahead) and future as lying below (or behind), in both, Turkish and English and in many other languages the phenomena are being expressed in an opposite order. We think of the past as of the time period that stays back/behind us/below which is, in comparison with the Chinese language, contrasted with the word shang ‘the one which is above, ahead, in front’. For the time that is before us, in the future, Chinese uses xia ‘lying below, at the back, behind’. Past tense: 上星期 shang-xing-qi “ the upper week”, 上一年 shangyinian “the upper year”, 上一代shangyidai “the upper generation (the generation above), a generation in front (of us)”, 上半年shangbannian “the upper half a year (six months), half a year ahead”, Future tense: 下星期 xia-xing-qi “the lower week, the week below”, 下一年 xiayinian “the year below” 下一代xiayidai “the generation below/generation behind (us)” 下半年xiabannian “the lower half a year (six months), half a year behind (ago)” (Lan 2002: 163-164). What is the reason for the existing differences in temporal metaphors between Turkish and Chinese? We need to start from the point of cultural differences in given societies if we want to answer the question successfully. For over two millennia of Chinese history, while Confucianism has been a dominant ideology on the one hand, Taoism has formed an important part of Chinese culture on the other, both systems of thought advocated the return to nature, to the origins, and to the past (Liu 1997:184-188). These two symbolic systems possibly imposed the view on temporality in Chinese culture. For the Chinese the past is located above because practical experiences gained in the past are more valuable, the unknown is less valuable than the known and experienced; the future is placed below as it is unknown and cannot be better than the past, it is unclear if it will bring good conditions, it is doubtful and undecided. On the other hand, we know that from the beginning the Turks have adopted a different way of life and forms of subsistence than the Chinese. These different ways of life were based on dissimilar habits and practices and logically each culture created its own philosophical perspectives. For the Turks (Turkic communities of the past) to survive, it was necessary to reconnect experiences gained in the past to a fixed location again and again because they could not stay and live long-term in one place.1 Cruel climatic conditions and local circumstances often triggered major migration movements, always directed to the unknown, forward, and made it necessary for them to go toward the future. The migration of the Turks were not “ordinary movements between summer pastures in highlands and winter camps in valleys, for various reasons they usually had to leave the regions they lived in en masse and by traversing long distances they went on to search for another place” (Taşağıl 2015: 37). The Turks have always wondered about the life and conditions waiting ahead - on the horizon. Therefore, their course has always headed in a forward direction. In Chinese, even age and a life course are conceptualized in vertical directions (up-down). For example: 高筹化gaochouhua “high age/ ageing”, 低令化dilinghua “to bring (down) to the lower age/rejuvenation”. The type of the specific conceptualization in the Chinese culture is rooted in the traditional respect towards the elders. This notion was formed by the glorification of ancestors, always visualizing them in the above, while descendants, forthcoming generations are always situated below. The status of the old age is high and the status of the young ones is low (Gao 2005:105). The medieval dictionary from the 11th century Divanu Lugat’it Türk contains the following proverb: kökkä saġursa yüzkä tüşür (Atalay II 81; Dankoff II 6). It translates as “If a man spits against the sky, he will fall on his face.” The proverb may be interpreted like this: a person who wants to treat the seniors in a malicious way will face negative consequences in the form of his own fall. Certainly, this proverb evolved in the Turkish culture on the basis of traditional metaphor that states THE SENIORS ARE SUPERIOR (they are ‘above’). Nevertheless, it can be also argued that the phrase is related to the belief in Göktanrı (The Sky God). Similar example appears also in the Buddhist texts. In the extant Buddhist manuscripts of the Uygurs who translated very sacred Buddhist sources from the Chinese, Buddha’s name is connoted by the following metaphor Atı kötrülmiş (The Rising/Ascendant Name). However, the expression atı kötrülmüş in the source languages of the original text - Sanskrit and Chinese - does not bear the same meaning like in Uygur language. BUDDHA’S NAME IS ASCENDANT is an orientational metaphor (Kemal 2003:123-124).2 The expression was translated into the target language from its Sanskrit and Chinese equivalents in a different form and The Ascendant Name for Buddha became a technical term that seems to be directly influenced by the belief in the Sky God of the (ancient and medieval) Turks and in that case the supreme Sky God becomes incorporated into the Buddhist belief system. 1. Since the distant past, a world view of society has been influenced and shaped by experienced, well tested and accumulated values in hand; by the formation of material and spiritual culture, even by interacting with all the living creatures in nature, by both, big and small social events and changes. 2. Metaphors reflect the differences between cultures that are caused by distinguished perspectives on life or world views. 3. The cultures with similar world views or previous interaction of its members show a certain level of similarity between metaphors. E.g. both, in Turkish and Chinese, the notion of time is depicted by images of a rapid passage of water or a (flying) arrow. 4. All metaphors contained in one particular language to exhibit specific attributes of the language to its very own culture, they must at the same time reflect the world view of a particular society. Therefore, the study of metaphors means always researching how a particular society perceives the world and what kind of world view it possesses