A Cognitive Approach to Metaphor in Prose: Truth and Falsehood in Leo Tolstoy’s

Abstract Russian has two words corresponding to English truth and four words cor-responding to English lie. While studies have detailed the semantic and pragmatic differences between these two terms, how these domains are metaphorized in every-day language—and exploited in literature—has yet to be examined. In the first half of the article, I present an analysis of everyday metaphorical expressions for Truth and Falsehood in contemporary Russian. Linguistic evidence suggests that these domains are understood via a small set of interrelated conceptual structures. Metaphorical expressions in Russian cluster around one basic metaphor (KNOWING IS SEEING) and three image-schematic structures (STRAIGHT, PATH, and CONTAINER). This network of everyday metaphors serves as a point of reference for an examina-tion of Tolstoy’s aesthetic representations of the same domains. In the second part, I examineTolstoy’s extensions and elaborations of metaphors forTruth and Falsehood in his postconversion works, and I argue that they comprise a central metaphorical motif, the full complexity of which has yet to be appreciated, in his novella ‘‘The Death of Ivan Il’ich.’’ He struggled in a black sack into which he was being thrust by some invisible force... and with each moment he felt that he was getting closer and closer to For comments on earlier versions of this article, I amgrateful toAlanCienki,Michele Emana