We have found that naive participants display a high level of agreement when asked to choose or draw schematic representations, or image schemas, of concrete and abstract verbs. For example, participants tended to ascribe a horizontal image schema to push, and a vertical image schema to respect. This consistency in offline data is preliminary evidence that language invokes spatial forms of representation. It also provided norms that were used in further research investigating the activation of spatial image schemas during online language comprehension. We predicted that if comprehending a verb activates a spatial representation that is extended along a particular horizontal or vertical axis, it will affect other forms of spatial processing along that axis. In both a visual discrimination and a memory task, reaction times showed an interaction between the horizontal/vertical nature of the verb's image schema, and the horizontal/vertical position of the visual stimuli. In further experiments, we have used participants' eye movements to reveal the spatial representations evoked by language comprehension. When participants listen to a story and look at a blank wall or have their eyes closed, their eye movements will reflect the spatial structure of the narrative. Lastly, although it is typically argued that fictive language does not alter the literal meaning of a sentence, we have found that the fictive language used to describe a picture will influence how that image is inspected. We argue that such spatial effects of language comprehension provide evidence for the perceptual-motor character of linguistic representations.