Status as Space

In this post, I'd like to explore the relationship between social status and personal space. I’ll show that people often conceptualize status as space — more specifically, as territory — and that this helps explain a wide range of phenomena.

Ideas and Information are Territory . In this metaphor, ideas and information are understood as being owned or controlled by people. We talk of invading someone's privacy, of people being guarded , of ideological battlefields , and of something being his idea or her idea .

The relationship between status and space is of course more nuanced than just “higher status equals more space.” Elevation, centrality, connectedness, and proximity to things of value can privilege a smaller space over a larger one. Case in point: cities are higher-status locations relative to rural or suburban areas — not because, but in spite of

Further, because we also understand time, information, and relationships in spatial terms, our ideas about how status interacts with space bleed into those domains as well. We accord higher-status people more time, more control over their information, and more social distance than we accord people of lower status.

Affiliation is Proximity . In this metaphor, we understand personal relationships in spatial terms. You can keep in touch (or lose touch ) with someone. Friends and family are close , although some relatives are distant .

The interaction with status is two-fold. (1) People of higher status are accorded more social distance; and (2) physical distanc

Perhaps this is one of the reasons rejections letters are so formal (implying a greater social distance) while acceptance letters are more familiar (implying a smaller social distance). Encoding the desired relationship in the language reinforces the message.

• Micromanagement is annoying because it's a threat to one's status, the same way getting in someone's face is a threat.

• Transparency is traditionally seen as an insult to power because it's a violation of the (assumed) prerogative of leaders to keep more information to themselves.

Time is Space . In this metaphor, we understand time as a line. Durations become intervals of a given length. We speak of things in the future (or past) being near or far , of durations as long or short , of time horizons , and of events approaching or looming .

Since time is understood as space, many of our status-related rules for space apply to

The hallmark of a conceptual metaphor is that it embeds itself into our language in a variety of ways. In addition to the idiom “food for thought,” we also speak of chewing on an idea, of propositions being easy or hard to swallow , of being nourished by knowledge, of devouring a book, of putting an idea on the back burner , and of theories being h