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Outer space is, and has historically been, subject to human curiosity, imagination, and scientific inquiry. Yet it remains beyond direct human experience. While technological advancements have transformed our understanding of outer space from an abstract unknown into a place of scientific exploration, political ambition, and human interaction, the way people understand it is also influenced by language, culture, history, and imagination.

A growing body of humanities and social science research on outer space recognizes that outer space is not just a physical place, but a place shaped by human knowledge, interaction, and narratives. However, linguistic perspectives remain scarce. This thesis situates and contributes to this field as it aims to explore, and by doing so, shed light on how outer space is conceptualized and linguistically construed.

Situated within the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics, this study approaches language as a lens through which conceptualization can be explored. Rather than just serving as a means of communication, language also reflects the relationship between thought, experience, and reality. In the case of outer space – a place that humans cannot directly interact with – the thesis offers insights into how people understand the unfamiliar.

The thesis comprises five empirical studies, primarily employing corpus linguistic methods to analyze American English, given its prominence in scientific, technological, and cultural discourses on space. The studies examine motion verbs, prepositional constructions, compound nouns, and metaphors, analyzing these via a combination of qualitative and quantitative perspectives to capture both common usage patterns involving these constructions and trends as well as finer details of how space is conceptualized.

The results show that language about space is firmly rooted in embodied experiences. Even in an environment where fundamental physical principles such as gravity no longer apply embodied experience influence how people think and talk. Furthermore, outer space is also understood through personifications and metaphors that draw upon familiar, embodied experiences, offering ways to make sense of abstract and unfamiliar places in both conventional and creative ways. Finally, the results encompass conceptualizations specific to the United States' cultural context, influenced by the Cold War, colonial expansion, and economic or political discourse on space exploration and tourism. By means of a detailed examination of how outer space is linguistically construed and conceptualized in American English, this thesis shows that studying the patterns of language and thought can provide insights into how people understand, engage with, and imagine outer space now and in the future. 

This paper establishes and explores the lexical field of astromotion (motion in outer space) from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective by investigating verb collocates of space, outer space and deep space from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (coca). The primary focus is on the moving figure and the manner of motion involved. The paper accounts for prototypical uses of the verbs and puts the results in dialogue with previous research into motion events on earth. The main findings are that (1) astromotion is primarily lexicalized by general motion verbs or relexicalizations from other domains of motion; (2) transitive verb constructions are more common than in previously studied domains of motion and; (3) control and speed are important disambiguating properties. The paper also illustrates how the lexical field has been influenced by our empirical knowledge, imagination, and embodied experiences.

Characters in science fiction TV have to move through the universe at the speed which the plot necessitates. In Star Trek, characters can beam from one location to another in an instant. In the visual modality, there is no continuous path of motion between the source and the goal, which would technically disqualify beam from most linguistic definitions of motion. This study aims to map out the usage patterns of beam and investigate whether or not it is linguistically construed as motion within the show. The study is based on a section of the TV Corpus (Davies, Mark. 2019. The TV Corpus. https://www.english-corpora.org/tv/ (accessed 28 May 2022)) consisting of all available episodes of all Star Trek TV series between 1966 and 2005 and uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The study found that beam is indeed used as a motion verb within the series. Its usage is also quite varied, denoting motion of many different figures in many different directions. The fact that we conceive of beaming as motion even though there is no continuous path might be partly explained by the etymology of beam, and partly by the embodied nature of language. Our current register makes it is hard to imagine transportation without movement.

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.

In the modern space age, outer space offers humanity new avenues for action, interaction, innovation, and exploration, challenging both our linguistic and conceptual horizons. This study examines how speakers of American English construe outer space through compounds (e.g., space ship, space program). Analyzing data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, this study investigates the relations within these compounds, the domains they combine, and the role of metaphor and metonymy in these constructions. The findings reveal systematic patterns that point towards a human-centered and utilitarian view of space, where space travel, research, politics, and entertainment dominate. The identified metaphorical mappings tend to either rely on embodied (earthly) experiences, or on a narrative that likens space exploration to the historical expansion of America’s frontier. This study deepens our understanding of how humans conceptualize the unfamiliar and emphasizes how the construal and conceptualization of outer space is inherently grounded in bodily experience. 

Outer space is significantly different from Earth, posing challenges to human understanding. Building on research on theory-constitutive metaphors in popular science communication (Smedinga et al., 2023) and the role of embodiment in scientific reasoning (Gibbs, 2006; Niebert et al., 2012), we investigate the metaphors used for conceptualizing the size, boundaries, infinite nature, and expansion of the universe in popular science books. Results show that metaphors rooted in familiar, embodied experiences – such as humanscale objects, bodies, relationships, and environments – play a central role in shaping our understanding of abstract and large-scale phenomena. Personification recurs in the data, bringing embodiment to the fore, but also raises questions about the metaphoricity of personification metaphors. The metaphors make the universe conceptually accessible and comprehensible to everyone engaging with it. Moreover, theory-constitutive metaphors, such as cosmic inflation and the fabric of space-time not only aid in explaining scientific ideas to laypeople but also serve as integral cognitive tools in scientific reasoning. More generally, the results illustrate the pervasive role of metaphors in scientific reasoning and science popularization, contributing to our understanding of how metaphors can bridge the gap between human, embodied cognition, and scientific abstraction.