El Niño / La Niña Phenomenon and Vector Nomination in Indo-European Culture

Human cognition and semiotics have their roots in the natural environment. Spatial generation is a mechanism of semiosis associated with spatial perception reflected in linguistic and cultural structures. The article introduces a vector nomination model of universal associative patterns between ascending /  descending vectors and the cultural concepts of male / female or active / passive. The spatial perception manifests itself in intradirectional aspects, when the environment affects cognition, as well as in extradirectional, when cognition affects cultural practices. The research relied on an interdisciplinary approach that united semiotic, mythological, and cognitive analyses of Indo-European traditions and climatic phenomena. The ascending vector (earth → sky) was consistently associated with the masculine and the sacred (Indra, Zeus, burial mounds, etc.) while the descending vector (heaven → earth) was connected with the feminine and the fertile (earth goddesses, funeral rituals). The climatic phenomena of El Niño (active, destructive) and La Niña (stabilizing) confirm the universal character of this binary, which makes spatial generation a key mechanism for mythologizing natural processes. This mechanism persists in modern discourses. The research can be expanded onto other cultural traditions, with a subsequent experimental verification of the effect of spatial vectors on associative thinking. 

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