Conceptual Metaphors for the Domains TRUTH and FALSEHOOD in Russian

The proposed paper is a case study of Russian metaphors for Truth and Falsehood as they are conventionally and aesthetically conceptualized in the spoken and written language. Although work has been carried out on the general semantics of the Russian words for "truth" (pravda, istina) and "falsehood" (nepravda, lozh', obman, vran'e) (see, for example, Arutiunova 1991, 1994, 1995; Mondry and Taylor; Shopen), a systematic treatment of metaphorical expressions associated with these domains has yet to be proposed. I will show that a coherent account of the meaning of these domains for speakers of Russian (and potentially other languages) can be arrived at within Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor framework. In doing so, I will argue that Russians' understanding of these highly abstract domains is grounded in more basic forms of concrete bodily experience.

In my discussion, I will focus on the linguistic expressions which Russian speakers use to talk about these domains and then infer from these the conceptual metaphors and schemas which support patterns of usage. My analysis is based on extensive observation of expressions for these domains in spoken Russian as well as on systematic analysis of the use of such expressions in journalistic writing, memoirs, and a series of popular detective novels. Analysis of idiomatic expressions and etymologies of words associated with these domains, as well as comparisons to the corresponding English systme of metaphors, will be made where relevant.

Research on this question has shown that the domains of Truth and Falsehood are coherently organized and meaningfully understood via a small set of conceptual structures which are subject to many kinds of elaboration and extension. The structures which make up the general set (along with a few examples of usage) are: the metaphor Knowing Is Seeing (iasnaia istina; vsplyt' na svet; vyiti naruzhu), and the image schemas Straight (see Cienki 1998a and 1998b), Path (iskat' pravdu; otkryt' dostup k istine; byt' na lozhnom puti; vokrug da okolo khodit'), and Container (dokapat'sia do istiny; skryt' istinu; priukrashivat' pravdu; pod kakim-to sousom). Each general structure is open to considerable elaboration. For example, the image schema Container provides motivation for a variety of construals: Truth Is Internal Depth, Lies Are Covering of the (Meaning) Container, Truth Is Clean, and Truth Is Nourishment. The metaphorical expressions motivated by these conceptual structures are not isolated from one another, but instead form a complex network of related meanings. I will provide a plausible version of what this network must be like in order to account for the range of conventional expressions which exist in modern Russian.

The conventional network of meanings serves as a point of reference for aestheticized representations of the same domains. For example, the four conceptual schemas which underlie conventional understandings of Truth and Falsehood in Russian resonate throughout the literary and polemical writings of Leo Tolstoy, which is hardly surprising given his deep-rooted obsession with these themes. Tolstoy continually plugs the reader into the network of meaning for these two domains by extending and elaborating the conceptual structures which compose the conventional network. I will conclude my paper by examining the cognitive significance of one such aesthetic elaboration, namely, the powerful image of the black bag (chernyi meshok) which plays a central role in Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Il'ich."

Arutiunova, N. D. 1995. "Istina i etika."

Arutiunova, N. D. 1994. "Istina i sud'ba."

Arutiunova, N. D. 1991. "Istina: fon i konnotatsii."

Cienki, A. 1998a. "STRAIGHT: An image schema and its metaphorical extensions."

Cienki, A. 1998b. "Slavic Roots for 'Straight' and 'Bent'."

Mondry, H. and J. Taylor. 1992. "Lying in Russian."

Shopen, T. Unpublished ms. "Semantic Invariants and the Russian Words Translated 'Truth' and 'Lie'."