Spatial Metaphors

FIGURE 2. Lady 3 Flint at Hill of Sand, from page 15 of the Codex Nuttall.

FIGURE 2. Lady 3 Flint at Hill of Sand, from page 15 of the Codex Nuttall.

We will begin with some metaphoric uses of the human body in the screenfolds. The image in Figure 2 depicts Lady 3 Flint “Shell Quechquemitl” standing before a smoking “Hill of Sand.” She holds a smoking incense burner and a maguey spine. The Hill of Sand has grey and orange plumes of smoke rising from its summit and a pair of sandaled feet emerging from beneath its base. These feet specify the spatial relationship between Lady 3 Flint and the mountain at which she worships—she is literally “at the foot of” this smoking pinnacle. As in English, Dzaha Dzavui (Rain Speech, the language of the Ñudzavui ) used—and still uses—spatial metaphors based on the relationships of the parts of the human body. Speakers can specify positions “at the head of,” “on the back of,” “in the stomach of,” as well as “at the foot of” inanimate objects.2

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2 Brugman 1983; Macaulay 1996, 172-187.