Dr Sarah Duffy

Senior Lecturer

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

Dr Sarah Duffy is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics in the Department of Humanities at Northumbria, where she has been based since 2016. Prior to this, she held a lectureship in the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of Birmingham.

In 2019, Sarah launched the Cambridge University Press Elements Series in Cognitive Linguistics with Co-Editor, Nick Riches, and between 2016 to 2023, she served as Review Editor of the journal Language and Cognition. She currently sits on the Editorial Board of the journals Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistic Studies.

In 2019, Sarah was elected as Vice President for the UK Cognitive Linguistics Association. She is also Visiting Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China.

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Using a range of experimental approaches, Sarah's main strand of research explores the ways in which people use metaphors to understand and reason about abstract concepts. Her work features in journals such as Cognitive Linguistics, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, and Metaphor and Symbol, and she has recently written a monograph with Michele Feist for Cambridge University Press, entitled Time, Metaphor, and Language: A Cognitive Science Perspective (2023). Sarah is also involved in a number of projects exploring real-world applications of metaphor and embodied cognition in education, society, design, and crime.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
The role of narrative time in legal storytelling: A comparative analysis of opening statements in the Grant and Amanda Hayes trials, Blewitt, K., Duffy, S. 10 Oct 2025, In: Linguistics Vanguard
Time, Duffy, S., Feist, M. 14 May 2024, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Cognitive Linguistics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Cognitive science: Piecing together the puzzle, Feist, M., Duffy, S. Jul 2023, In: Cognitive Science
Time, Metaphor, and Language: A Cognitive Science Perspective, Duffy, S., Feist, M. 23 Nov 2023
To each their own: A review of individual differences and metaphorical perspectives on time, Feist, M., Duffy, S. 10 Aug 2023, In: Frontiers in Psychology
Modals and conditionals in instrumental practical reasoning: The case of Polish, Sztencel, M., Duffy, S. 31 Aug 2022, In: Linguistics Vanguard
Can co-speech gestures alone carry the mental time line?, Winter, B., Duffy, S. Sep 2020, In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition
On the path of time: Temporal motion in typological perspective, Feist, M., Duffy, S. 1 Sep 2020, In: Language and Cognition
Power, gender, and individual differences in spatial metaphor: The role of perceptual stereotypes and language statistics, Winter, B., Duffy, S., Littlemore, J. 2020, In: Metaphor and Symbol
Reporting conditionals with modals, Sztencel, M., Duffy, S. 2019, Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages, Cham, Springer