Andrea Csillag
Metaphoric and Metonymic Expressions of Disgust with and without Adjectives in English
Introduction
The language of emotion shows how we conceptualize the generic notion of emotion and specific emotions such as anger, fear or happiness. The linguistic expressions denoting our emotion experiences are used either literally or figuratively. Our figurative expressions are classified as metaphors and metonymies (Lakoff 1987, Kövecses 1990, 2000). They depict various details accompanying emotions including physiological and behavioural reactions as well as facial expressions.
The present paper is part of an investigation into the language of disgust, which is one of the six universal basic emotions (Ekman et al. 1972, 1999). At an earlier stage of my research, I studied the language of disgust based on a corpus built from sentences on the internet site https://sentence.yourdictionary.com/
disgust and found that it contains a number of metonymies and metaphors.
I also found that a considerable number of linguistic expressions contain a combination of some adjective and the term disgust. The present paper aims to find out how the adjectives occurring in the corpus contribute to the concept of disgust.
Disgust
Disgust is an emotion we experience when we taste, smell, touch or see something distasteful, revolting or potentially dangerous to our health or well-being. The most common and the most typical bodily reactions are frowning, opening the mouth, protruding the lips, wrinkling the nose, as well as spitting, turning away and even vomiting and/or pushing away the object that triggers the emotion (Darwin 1999/1872, 256–60).
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Andrea Csillag
Following the Darwinian tradition, Ekman et al. (1972) identify disgust as a universal basic emotion besides anger, happiness, sadness, fear and interest. They claim that facial expressions going together with disgust are biologically determined therefore they are practically the same and easily recognizable throughout different cultures all around the world.
Plutchik (1980) summarizes the course of disgust reactions as follows:
people experience disgust when they see a gruesome object and consider it as a potential poison for them. (He calls the gruesome object the disgust elicitor.) When people meet a disgust elicitor, they typically make a disgusted face, frown, protrude their lips and wrinkle their nose, etc, and often push the disgusting object away or turn away from the object and they may even vomit. Plutchik claims that such a course of reactions may take place anywhere and everywhere in the world regardless of culture therefore he concludes that the phenomenon has an evolutionary significance.
McGinn (2011) has a philosophical approach to disgust. Comparing disgust to hatred and fear. He claims that the three emotions are similar in that they are reactions to things that are seen as potentially dangerous and harmful but the three emotions are different because hatred and fear are existence-dependent emotions while disgust is not an existence-dependent emotion. He explains that people only feel hatred and fear when they are faced with existing dangers but one may feel disgust in cases when a disgust elicitor is present and also in cases when no disgust elicitor is physically present, however, it appears in people’s minds, which means that people may react with disgust to things or situations that they only imagine. Therefore, McGinn claims that disgust is rather a consciousness-centred emotion than a body-centred emotion because what really counts in the coming about of disgust is some kind of mental proximity to something that disgusts the experiencer and the reaction that follows is avoiding mental/perceptual contact with the disgust elicitor no matter whether it is real or imaginary.
Cognitive Linguistic Background to the Study of Emotion
Cognitive linguistics views the language of emotion as an exhaustive store of expressions capturing a large number of details of specific emotions and emotion in general. Consequently, we are in the position to understand emotions in their complexity by investigating their component parts:
a system of conceptual metonymies, a system of conceptual metaphors, a set of concepts linked to the emotion concept in question and a category of cognitive models, one or some of which are prototypical (Kövecses 1990, 40).
Metaphoric and Metonymic Expressions of Disgust
Metonymy and metaphor, the two most directly relevant notions to the present paper, are viewed as cognitive mechanisms (Lakoff 1987, Kövecses 1990, 2000), which underlie figurative expressions of emotions. Metonymy is “a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity is mentally accessed via another entity” (Radden and Kövecses 2007, 336), which means in the study of emotion language that an emotion under investigation (the target domain entity) is mentally accessed by a physiological change, behavioural reaction or a facial expression (the source domain entity). The expression He is white as a sheet, for example, may stand for fear, that is, the emotion fear is accessed via a physiological change of skin colour in the face area and the expression instantiates the metonymy BLOOD LEAVES FACE STANDS FOR FEAR (Kövecses 1990, 70).
Metaphor is another cognitive mechanism in which the target domain entity is understood in terms of a source domain entity (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). With reference to emotions, it means that emotions are understood in terms of concrete experiences such as fire, heat, war, container and so on (Kövecses 1990, 2000). Based on the analysis of a number of emotion concepts Kövecses (1990, 2000) finds that (a) one emotion may be conceptualized by several metaphors, e.g., LOVE IS FIRE, LOVE IS WAR and LOVE IS A JOURNEY instantiated by He is burning with love, She conquered him and It’s been a long, bumpy road; (b) several emotions may be conceptualized by one metaphor, e.g. LOVE IS FIRE and ANGER IS FIRE instantiated by He was burning with love (Kövecses 1990, 46), Those were inflammatory remarks (Kövecses 1990, 58); and (c) specific emotions converge in the generic concept of emotion captured in the metaphor EMOTION IS A FLUID IN A CONTAINER (Kövecses 1990, 144–59), which conceptualizes the prototype of emotion. The container metaphor of emotion is instantiated by expressions like I am filled with anger/love/disgust.
Disgust Metaphors in Related Literature
Researching cognitive linguistic literature on the language of disgust in English I have found two studies: Stefanowitsch (2006) covering disgust in a corpus-based analysis of several emotions and their metaphors in English and Kuczok (2016) discussing a considerable number of English and Polish expressions of disgust and comparing English and Polish metaphors of disgust in his corpus-based investigation. (In the present paper I focus on Kuczok’s findings only in relation to English expressions of disgust.)
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Stefanowitsch (2006, 89) presents a list of source domain entities of English metaphors of disgust. I include Stefanowitsch’s DISGUST metaphors with some of his examples below:
DISGUST IS A MIXED/PURE SUBSTANCE—pure disgust, mixture of disgust and EMOTION
DISGUST IS A SUBSTANCE IN A CONTAINER (UNDER PRESSURE)—X fill Y with disgust
DISGUST IS AN OPPONENT—X fights down disgust DISGUST IS PARALYSIS/A DISEASE—X be sick with disgust DISGUST IS HIGH/LOW (INTENSITY)—disgust rise (in X) DISGUST IS COLD—shiver of disgust
DISGUST IS FOOD—bitter disgust
DISGUST IS LIQUID—disgust floods through X DISGUST IS PAIN—tremor of disgust
DISGUST IS AN ORGANISM—root/seed of disgust DISGUST IS HEAT—X fuel disgust
DISGUST IS A BALLOON—X inflate with disgust DISGUST IS A HEAVY OBJECT—heavy disgust
Kuczok (2016) arranges English and Polish metaphors of disgust into the following groups:
a. physiological metaphors (cf. Apresjan 1997): DISGUST IS BEING SICK, SHUDDERING and GRIMACING—I feel sick with disgust;
The thought sent a shiver of disgust over her skin; Internally Adam grimaced as he recalled Anne’s sarcasm;
b. metaphors with sensory experiences as source domains: DISGUST IS TASTING SOMETHING BAD, SMELLING SOMETHING BAD, SEEING SOMETHING SPOILED/ SOMEONE ILL/ SOMETHING DIRTY/ SOMETHING UGLY, and SEEING/TOUCHING AN UNPLEASANT ANIMAL—Cleaning it out is yucky; The whole thing smells crooked to me; rotten weather; dirty little secrets; the whole ugly truth;
c. force dynamic metaphors (cf. Talmy 1988): DISGUST IS A REPULSIVE FORCE and DISGUST/OBJECT OF DISGUST IS AN OPPONENT—the seedy texture, which is off-putting to some; This notion that people were slaves is repugnant;
Metaphoric and Metonymic Expressions of Disgust
d. ontological/reification metaphors: DISGUST IS A CONTAINER, DISGUST IS AN INSTRUMENT/MEANS FOR DOING
SOMETHING and DISGUST IS A FLUID—He raised his hands in disgust; Anger and disgust flooded my poles;
e. orientational metaphor (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980): DISGUST IS DOWN—debasing habits of life.
The two lists above are rather different, however, there are some similarities:
both Stefanowitsch and Kuczok identify the OPPONENT and the CONTAINER metaphors. Stefanowitsch identifies paralysis/disease, while Kuczok being sick as a source domain for disgust metaphors. I find that they can be subsumed under the DISEASE metaphor. Stefanowitsch identifies food, while Kuczok identifies tasting something bad as source domains, which again can be subsumed under the FOOD SUBSTANCE metaphor.
It is interesting to note that the linguistic expression a shiver of disgust is understood as an instantiation of the metaphor DISGUST IS COLD in Stefanowitsch’s analysis, while as an instantiation of the metaphor DISGUST IS SHUDDERING in Kuczok’s. Based on my own research I argue that the expressions a shiver of disgust and She was shivering with disgust refer to a physiological reaction and instantiate the metonymy SHIVERING STANDS FOR DISGUST or to put it more generally PHYSICAL AGITATION STANDS FOR DISGUST (cf. Kövecses 1990, 70–73, PHYSICAL AGITATION STANDS FOR FEAR—he was shaking with fear). In a similar manner, I question Kuczok’s physiological metaphor DISGUST IS GRIMACING and I claim that linguistic expressions of grimacing instantiate the metonymy GRIMACING STANDS FOR DISGUST, which can also be subsumed under PHYSICAL AGITATION STANDS FOR DISGUST. As for the rest of the two authors’ findings, the differences may be explained by the differences in their corpora. On the other hand, the study of metonymies must have been outside the scope of their analyses, which explains the lack of reference to metonymies in their papers.
Disgust Metaphors and Metonymies—My First Research Findings
For the aim of my research, I have built a corpus of sentences presented on the internet site https://sentence.yourdictionary.com/disgust. My corpus contains 175 sentences, all of which are combined with the term disgust.
Disgust is used as a noun in 169 sentences and as a verb in 6 sentences.
Studying the examples I have found that the sentences capture a wide range