Topologically biased construal in offline processing: the case of up and down in the language of the blind

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of the particles up and down in the strategic meaning construal of particle verbs (PVs) in blind and sighted users of English as L2. The paper is situated within the cognitive linguistic framework. Based on the results of a speaker-judgment study with 20 blind and 20 sighted users of English, we show that PVs with down are more informative to all the participants, and that blind users rely on the particles (particularly the particle up) more than sighted users. We claim that the difference in informativeness is related to the experiential status of up and down. Down is more informative because it is at human scale, which limits its metaphorization potential. Up is more open-ended, making it more schematic and allowing greater departure from its original topology. Blind users rely on the particles more because they are more inclined to analyzing linguistic cues, since they often serve as additional experiential input. Moreover, the blind rely more on egocentric topology, which produces similar results for down, and different for the particle up.