Metaphorical Representations of the Lexeme Honesty in English: A Cognitive and Discourse-Based Analysis

Abstract

Recent developments in linguistics have proposed that abstract moral concepts are themselves not seen as static lexical meanings that are deposited in our brains to be pulled out of dictionaries, but rather as constructs of the mind and discourse with metaphor being a vehicle in this process. As a core moral value in English, honesty is often conceptualized with embodied metaphorical domains such as transparency, lightness, straightness, cloudiness, openness, value, and cleanness. Where the more general metaphorical conceptualization of moral constructs are concerned, the lexeme honesty has received less systematic attention than other moral concepts either from a cognitive or discourse-oriented perspective, despite being factually important as a moral lexical item. The present study seeks to explore the main conceptual metaphor underlying the expressions of honesty in English and how such metaphors function semantically, pragmatically, and evaluatively in discourse as explained in two theoretical frameworks, conceptual metaphor theory and discourse analysis. This analysis shows that honesty metaphors are systematic rather than stylistic, as they form cohesive conceptual networks that structure moral judgment, credibility assessment, and trust negotiation across several levels of context and discourse type (i.e., everyday vs. institutional). The findings position honesty metaphors not only as rhetorical devices but also as cognitive-loaded tools that encapsulate community-based ideas of morality. These results offer insight into metaphoric studies and the semantics surrounding morality as they demonstrate ways in which abstract ethical meaning is not only linguistically encoded but also pragmatically mobilized, indicating the possibility of further discourse-based and cross-cultural investigations of moral concepts.