Speakers unconsciously stage bodily displays of their experience and understanding of time. Their performance is based on a genuine “choreography of time” that determines the figures they trace and their occupation of conceptual space. The choreography may be observed, studied and eventually enhanced to create new embodied approaches to cognitive grammar. But the shift from spontaneous to controlled conceptual action is not so simple, as the present study reveals. Jean-Rémi LAPAIRE is professor of cognitive linguistics, language education and gesture studies at Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France. His current research is focused on the physicality of speech in relation to embodied social cognition. He has designed and tested multimodal learning environments where students are invited to use their sensorimotor abilities to engage in dynamic acts of observation and reenactment as they analyze human communication systems. He has built multidisciplinary partnerships with professional choreographers and dance theory specialists to explore the choreography of speech, i.e. how speakers use patterned moves to shape and display meanings in space. To quote this article Lapaire, Jean-Rémi. 2016. « The choreography of time : metaphor, gesture and construal ». In Gabriel, Rosangela.; Pelosi, Ana Cristina Linguagem e cognição: emergência e produção de sentidos. Florianópolis: Insular, 2016, pp. 217-34 ISBN 978-85-7474-952