Time is Running Out: A Corpus Based-Study on Javanese Metaphors of Time

Every culture in the world has its own ways to adapt against the challenges in their environments. In the process of adaption, people think and do whatever necessary for their survival. One of the many ways to be adaptive to the environment is to interpret or to give meaning to it. In this case, people often think it metaphorically or use metaphors to understand it. A metaphor is a way to understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another. Like other people, Javanese people also use metaphor to understand and experience their life. This study deals with how Javanese people interpret and give meaning to time. It is interesting to explore how Javanese people think about time, because they do not recognize tense in their grammar. To this end, this study employs a corpus method by building a one-million-word corpus consisting of Javanese fictional articles, short stories, and novels. Three time-related words become the focus of the study, namely wanci, wayah, and wektu. The analysis shows that wanci and wayah have similar characteristics as they both indicate time as a static entity. Wektu, on the other hand, indicates time as a dynamic entity.