Efectos de la inmersión en la embarazada.

Space and our experience of space are considered universal, based on the fact that we have the same body and share the fundamental bodily experiences. Therefore, human beings have the same pre-conceptual schemas irrespective of their geographic location: containment, verticality, balance.

A broader and more dynamic point of view places equal focus on the environment and on the interaction body-environment, and assumes that we are born as universal beings, but that we gradually adjust our perceptual apparatus to the cultural environment in which we are embedded. Zlatev (1997:5ff) introduced the term situated environmentto express our dual status as embodied beings, situated however within “a

culture of shared practices”. According to the author, the child’s language acquisition is the result of a dialectic relationship between bodily dispositions and sociocultural practices.

Cognitive linguistics has also recognised the importance of space for cognition42

. The analysis of conceptual metaphors based on spatial referents essentially contributed to the finding that language is spatially marked. Nevertheless, the findings mainly concern cases of spatial abilities that are basically shared by people, as all of us inhabit a common physical realm.

In what follows, attention will be drawn to cases in which the environment might incorporate consistent differences that would determine dramatically variant world-views. The present section does not aim to elaborate extensively on the relationship of geographic space – cognition – language, but only to offer a wider context within which the Maltese identity, the EU stance and the use of metaphors in the Maltese discourse can be understood.

Mark Johnson (1987:18ff.) has recognised the importance of our bodily movements in space and claimed that our sense of reality is based on the correlation between our interaction with the environment and our perception of the same. This correlation experience-perception determines the emergence of image schemas that give coherence to our reality. Yet, this idea of embodiment presupposes that everybody

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experiences the same space and does not distinguish between different types of environment.

In order to investigate how space influences cognition and renders our worldviews coherent, it is important to distinguish between physical space and experiential space. Physical space is the objective space that is considered to exist independent of its observer. The island as objective space is not relevant for the present purposes. The island as experiential space or lived space is assumed to be emotionally loaded, even if the islanders might often be unaware of many of the subtle feelings associated with the island.

Whether an islander or a mainlander, everybody makes the experience of a container. This experience can be positive or negative, depending on the situation, and might have a central or marginal place on our experiential map. Mark Johnson (1987: 22) distinguishes at least five important entailments of the experiential containment:

“(i) The experience of containment typically involves protection from, or resistance to, external forces. [...] (ii) Containment also limits and restricts forces within the container. [...] (iii) Because of this restraint of forces, the contained object gets a relative fixity of location. [...] (iv)This relative fixing of location within the container means that the contained object becomes either accessible or inaccessible to the view of

some observer. […] (v) Finally, we experience transitivity of containment. If B is in A,

then whatever is in B is also in A. [...].” Everybody experiences all these consequences

of containment. However, depending on further circumstances, some consequences become more salient on the experiential map than others.

It can be argued in the same vein that everybody has the experience of a container even within the first months of life, for example by coming into contact with the milk bottle. This develops into an image schema that will underlie the conceptualisation of various objects, organs or entities (even the human body) which are shaped in such a way that they can be used to hold liquid, but also other objects or entities. Thus, the milk bottle or water glass as basic containers will serve as an algorithm for the understanding of abstract entities, e.g. an island (that can hold people, buildings, flora and fauna, etc.) or a political union (that can incorporate various other countries). This generative model is represented in Fig. 6:43

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However, the basic image schema (in our case, the container) is unlikely to remain static in its characteristics. I argue that the interaction of the basic schema, which has become an abstract, and to a certain extent stable schema in its core features, with other entities, which are recognised and categorised (even if in an unconscious way) as containers, will modify the primary schema. In more concrete terms, the encounter with the island (or with the lift, prison ward, the straight jacket, etc.) is apt to alter the pre-existing container image schema.

Certainly, this superimposition of new elements upon a pre-existing schema is a gradual process (accompanying the epigenetic development), which can be represented as follows:

Figure 6: Containers

As outlined above, we first have an egocentric (body-centred) frame of reference, which later evolves into an allocentric frame of reference44. According to Piaget and Inhelder

(1998: 9), a baby’s frame of reference during the first 5-6 weeks is entirely egocentric45; it is only after this age that babies are able to recognise familiar faces. Thus, only after our first weeks of existence do we come into contact with the first elements of the socio-physical environment (i.e. objects in the room, the house, the family). Later, our environment grows progressively larger, and we come into contact with the native town (with its school, church and grocery shop, etc.) and with the mountains or the meadows, the island with its boundaries or the beach.

The relationship between individual, spatial behaviour and the environment is the focus of behavioural geography. According to William Kirk, “Behavioural environment is thus a psycho-physical field in which phenomenal facts are arranged into patterns or structures (gestalten) and acquire values in cultural contexts.” (Kirk 1963: 366)

For future research, it would be interesting to extend the scope of behavioural geography in order to account for political decisions and the overall process of decision- making. Furthermore, the findings of behavioural geography should be applied to the (social and political) behaviour within insular spaces.

The following section will continue this line of argument with the aim of explaining the mysteries of the Maltese identity.

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The terms egocentric and allocentric are recurrently used in the field of behavioural psychology.

45_{“[...] if during the first few months of existence the child’s universe is really one lacking permanent}

objects [...], this means that perceived figures simply appear and disappear like moving tableaux (...). However, one can say that from the age of 5-6 weeks, following the appearance of smiling, the young baby is capable of recognition. Thus it recognizes a familiar face despite changes in distance or the effects

9.

The EU and the Maltese Identity: Smallness,