Of the Passage to the Other World
Linguaculture August 17, 2022 Donna-Alexandra Ursu
People who have had a near-death experience (NDE) use language that reveals how they conceptualize the journey to an afterlife, drawing on conceptual metaphors and image schemas. Analyzing Raymond Moody's and Eben Alexander's accounts, the author identifies a ten-stage idealized cognitive model of NDE based on Lakoff's and Barsalou's frameworks. Despite NDErs' claims that the experience is ineffable, they successfully depict the passage between worlds, with kinesthetic image schemas—pre-conceptual and inherently meaningful—serving as the true creators of that world. The article also draws parallels between NDE narratives and C. S. Lewis's analysis of stories in 'On Stories'.