Abstract
Through the study of a general corpus (Corpus of Contemporary American English—COCA) and a specific corpus (Smell by R. Jha), this paper aims to explore the linguistic expression of the olfactory domain. Considering the essential lack of specific terms in this domain, the ability of metaphor and metonymy to compensate such a shortfall of vocabulary is addressed. These conceptual mechanisms prove to be apt at structuring and expanding the limited lexicon in the olfactory domain, an expansion that seems crystallised in the recurrent metaphor a smell is an invader.
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Notes
- 1.
https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ (2016).
- 2.
All numbered examples refer to the specific corpus Smell, by R. Jha, followed by the page number.
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Digonnet, R. (2018). The Linguistic Expression of Smells: From Lack to Abundance?. In: Baicchi, A., Digonnet, R., Sandford, J. (eds) Sensory Perceptions in Language, Embodiment and Epistemology. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91277-6_10
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