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Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 22:1 (2024) ► pp.70–99

A case for metonymic synesthesia

Describing olfactory stimuli in terms of taste adjectives in German

ORCID logo | University of Debrecen
Verbal synesthesia is generally considered to be a special type of metaphor involving concepts stemming from distinct sensory domains. However, with the upsurge of metonymy research some authors have proposed a metonymic motivation for synesthetic expressions. In line with these proposals, I argue in my paper that (i) a considerable portion of synesthetic expressions are in fact metonymic and (ii) they are based either on co-occurrence or on an intra-modal resemblance of sensory stimuli. Since olfaction offers itself as an ideal terrain to study synaesthetic expressions due to its relatively poor lexicalization in most languages, in order to test my hypotheses, I present the results of a corpus study on German synesthetic attribute-noun constructions combining gustatory adjectives with olfactory nouns. My results suggest that the heterogeneity of verbal synesthesia regarding its conceptual background cannot be grasped simply by proposing that it is a metaphorical phenomenon.
Keywords: metonymy, metaphor, synesthesia, olfaction, smell, gustation, taste
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Intrafield expressions: Metaphorical, metonymic or literal?
  • 3.Intrafield metonymy
  • 4.The characterization of olfactory stimuli by taste adjectives in German
    • 4.1Corpus and procedure
    • 4.2Results
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Source of the examples
Published online: 23 May 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00151.tot
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Galac, Ádám
2024. Bold colors, sweeping melodies, offensive smells. International Journal of Language and Culture 11:1 ► pp. 58 ff. DOI logo

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