Volume 13, Issue 2 (2022)                   LRR 2022, 13(2): 655-689 | Back to browse issues page


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Sharifi S, Yazdan-Mehr M J. A Comparative Study on Conceptualisations and Linguistic Encodings of Smell Sense in Persian and Russian from Cutural-Cognitive Point of View. LRR 2022; 13 (2) :655-689
URL: http://lrr.modares.ac.ir/article-14-43069-en.html
1- Associate professor of Linguistics, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran , sh-sharifi@um.ac.ir
2- Assistant professor of Russian language, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
Abstract:   (2264 Views)
This research aims at studying the conceptualizations and linguistic encodings of smell sense in Persian and Russian from Cultural-Cognitive Linguistics point of view, using Sharifian’s (2017) and Kövecses’ (2018) frameworks. Research data have been gathered through the internet from different weblogs and sites, but for extracting the synonyms and collocations of the word “smell”, dictionaries of these languages have been used too. The results show that in both languages the smell sense is applied both as the source and target domain in metaphors and both the higher and lower senses are used as the source domain in their synesthetic constructions. Two macro-metaphors , GOOD IS SMELLY and BAD IS SMELLY can be seen in both languages. "Suspecting, finding out/knowing, vanishing, filling, representing(something) and getting into trouble/occurring a difficulty are some of shared conceptualizations in these two languages. Apart from conceptualisations, some similarities and differences can be seen in the linguistic encodings in these two languages. Similarities confirm Kövecses (2010) in his belief that some conceptual metaphors in the sensory domain of languages are nearly universal because of the common experiences of all human beings. Differences reflect the Sharifian’s idea (2017) that says the origin of concetualisations is cultural cognition which is not totally the same, because of the asymmetric distribution, even in one community.
 
  1.  Introduction
Sense of smell is one of the oldest seneses and one of the important ways of experiencing and .. the world around, the cognition which is the basis of different conceptualisations which atleast partly are represented in the languages. The objective of the present research is to determine the conceptualisations and linguistic encoding of the sense of smell in the Persian and Russian languages. To obtain this aim, Sharifian’s theoretical and analytical frame works of Vultural LInguistics ,generally, and the his frame work for emotions, particularly have been used. Research Quesstions of the study are as following:
-What are the conceptualisations and linguistic encodings of sense of smell in the Persian and Russian languages?
-What are the differences and similarities of the conceptualisations and linguistic encodings of the sense of smell in these two languages?

2. Literature Review
Not much works have been done on senses from linguistics or specifically cultural point of view in Persian. The research have done are mostly focused on synestethia as a figure of speech in literary works, especially in poems. Here are some of them:
Elhami(1378) has studies on synestethia in Bidel Dehlavi’s sonnets. Karimi(1378) has worked on this figure of speech in the Persian poems from the past to the present to show that it was used limitedly in the past but was more frequent in Hinidi style and now adays it’s quite common. Karimi, Gholami Mehmandoosti and Mobasheri(1392) studied the sense of taste and its synestethia in Rumi’s poems.
Amirhajoiloo(1393) worked on synestethia  in Vahshi Bafghi’s poems.   Sa’dzadeh and Ojaghalizadeh() have a research on the structure of synestethia in Simin Behbahani’s poems.
Mahmoodi and Rashki() have a study on Synestethia in Nasrollah mardani’s poems and Bahmani motlagh(1396) have a paper on Shafiee Kadkani’s poems. Research works on the sense of smell from linguistics point of view are not also considerable in the Russian language. The one which is related to the present study some how is the asalayeva (2011)’s work on the  collocation of the sense of smell with different words and phrases and he has come to this conclusion that the good smell and bad smell have different collocations in the Russian language.

3. Methodology
This is a qualitative research which is done by a descriptive-analytic method on some Persian and Russian data. To gather the research data first the Kövecses’ lexical approach was used and the members of the smell category were found through different dictionaries of both languages. After that five most frequent members were considered and searched in the syber space to find the natural uses of these members in the persian and Russian utterances and specify the conceptualisations, linguistic encodings and the cultural schemas of the smell category members in these two languages. The search was continuing by the time that no new conceptualization or linguistic encoding was found.

4. Results
As a whole two main macro metaphors are found in these two languages regarding the sense of smell: BAD IS SMELLY and GOOD IS SMELLY, But ofcourse GOOD SMELLs GOOD and BAD SMELLS BAD, but neutrally when the sense of smell is used in these two languages, the conceptualisations of  the sense of smell are negative. The spearkers of both the languages use the sense of smell as both the target and source domain in conceptualisations. In syenestethia they use both the higher and lower senses as target domain so there are some similarities between these two languages regarding the way they use the sense of smell but there are also some diffrenses in the conceptualisations and especially in the linguistic encodings.

5. Discussion
The findings of the paper show that the way we conceptualize our world and encode in the language is affected by our experiences, cognition and culture. So while the Persian speakers smells trouble when they get into trouble, The Russian speakers smell the white oil when they are in trouble or for the Russian speakers the bad smell is crawlling on the earth and bad smell can make you deaf.These differences can not be accidental and they can show the different way of looking at the world by the speakers of these two languages.

6. Conclusion
As a whole we found some similarities and differences in conceptualisations and encodings of the sense of smell between these two languages. The similarities approve the Kövecses’s view saying that there are the common features in conceptualisations of the senses in the languages of the world maybe because of the common way we experience the world through the senses and the diffrences are along with the Sharifian’s idea that says since the origion of the conceptualisations is the cultural cognition, they can not be the same in different languages.



 
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Article Type: مقالات علمی پژوهشی | Subject: Linguistics
Published: 2022/05/31

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