Metaphors in Polish, English, Russian, and French perfumery discourse

Abstract

This paper examines metaphors in perfume reviews in four languages, namely Polish, English, Russian, and French. Some typical features of the perfumery discourse, similar across the four languages, have been highlighted, such as clustering, extension, and mixing metaphors. The authors also discuss the most typical schemata used in the conceptualization of perfumes. Although the analyzed texts exhibit a certain similarity, a statistical analysis of the reviews identifies some interesting discrepancies between the languages, that is: unequal distribution of metaphorical types, preferences in usage of perceptual and non-perceptual source frames, and variance in perfume conceptualization (perfume is a woman vs. perfume is a man).