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Article published In: International Journal of Language and Culture
Vol. 11:1 (2024) ► pp.58–94

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Bold colors, sweeping melodies, offensive smells

A corpus-based analysis of the figurative representations of visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli in English and Hungarian

 | Eötvös Loránd University
Published online: 8 February 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00046.gal
Abstract
This paper presents a corpus-based exploratory study of the figurative conceptualizations of visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli in English and Hungarian. Through a manual semantic analysis of altogether 6,800 occurrences of 18 sensory nouns (three per sensory modality in each language) in the TenTen corpora, the following conceptualization types of perceptual stimuli have been examined: reification, agentification, animization, and personification. The paper presents the relative frequencies of these conceptualizations along with their subtypes and concrete linguistic manifestations in English and Hungarian. Among a number of interesting observations that call for further investigations, the following findings merit special attention: (1) visual stimuli have the lowest values in every category; (2) in both languages, agentification is the most typical in the case of olfaction; (3) with the exception of representations of olfactory stimuli as living beings, every conceptualization type is more frequent in the Hungarian data.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Sensory experiences, embodiment, and culture
    • 2.2Figurative construal
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1The data
    • 3.2The annotation
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Reification
      • Sensory stimuli as objects
      • Sensory stimuli as materials
      • Physical effects
    • 4.2Agentification
    • 4.3Animization and personification
      • Specific animizations
      • Generic animizations
      • Conventionalized and novel personifications
      • Metonymic personifications
      • Conceptualizations as living beings summed up
    • 4.4Above humans in the Great Chain of Being
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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