Smells Like Simile: Olfactory Expressions and their Figurative Potential in the Bosnian Language Cover Image

Smells Like Simile: Olfactory Expressions and their Figurative Potential in the Bosnian Language
Smells Like Simile: Olfactory Expressions and their Figurative Potential in the Bosnian Language

Author(s): Adi Maslo
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Communication studies, South Slavic Languages, Philology
Published by: Institut za jezik
Keywords: olfactory language; simile; olfaction; Bosnian language; figurative language;

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes expressions that use the olfactory domain as a figurative source in the Bosnian language. Authentic texts retrieved from the Sketch Engine web application were used as the corpus for the study. The web corpus includes blogs, news portals, and other web pages that use olfactory expressions either in the main text or in the respective comment sections. Two basic smell expressions were found to have the greatest figurative potential and therefore examined in this study. The results of the two basic smell expressions indicate that they are mainly used figuratively with simile being the main focus. Another finding is that olfactory expressions are used for anticipatory purposes.

  • Issue Year: 2022
  • Issue No: 33
  • Page Range: 55-81
  • Page Count: 27
  • Language: English