This is a study of how perceptual metaphors for knowledge can be used by English speakers as part of a pragmatic strategy to reduce the speaker's own agency in the events described. In this case the narratives are accounts of miraculous signs recounted by pilgrims at a Marian apparition site. The hypothesis tested was that many features of the discourse used in pilgrim's narratives are manifestations of an underlying conflict of establishing the authenticity of a religious experience. It was proposed that pilgrims are under pragmatic pressures to reduce their agency in the events described, in order to attribute divine authority to those experiences, and that one linguistic manifestation of this pressure would be pilgrims' increased use of non-visual metaphors for knowledge, as a way to emphasize a passive relationship to the supernatural. This was tested by comparing pilgrims' use of visual and non-visual metaphors for knowledge in their discourse. (Victor Balaban)