Language representation of odour in the Internet perfume discourse

Odourative perception seems to be one of the most important steps in familiarization of human mind with the material world around, but many researchers notice that there are quite poor vocabulary means to express this perceptual mode. Nowadays the most intensive development of odourative language units can be observed in a special and highly developed perfume discourse. On the one hand, we can mention the advertisement language with its clear standards and tendencies to attract the reader's attention to the particular product presented. On the other hand, it is not only the advertisement discourse itself: this type of discourse gives a chance for the speaker to be involved in it and to create one's own texts to express the person's opinion and the attitude to a specific scent. Analyzing such speech utterances on different Internet forums we can reveal the following language specifics in expressing personal feelings about the scents. The person describing a particular scent very often hesitates to define it and argues the absence of specialized language to speak about scents. Nominations and concrete expressions the person chooses are sometimes very subjective and quite far from any perception mode (e.g., современный = 'modern'). It causes the fact that not all personal concrete scent definitions can be accepted and understood by the others. Nevertheless, we should say that the person always tries to make the scent ''familiar and personal'' using specific language means. Inability to choose proper words to express the impressions about scents leads to one of two ways of personal communicative performance. The first way is to agree with the language conventions accepted in the advertisement discourse and, therefore, use the fixed terminology (defining the components or notes of the scent). The second way is when the speaker creates their own language full of metaphors in descriptions of scents and, therefore, widens the borders of odourative language. The last case can be presented mostly by the musical metaphors: revealing the scent can be similar to the changes in sounds. The scent can be expressed through the water and anthropomorphous metaphors as well. The scent can be similar to the person with their emotions, characters and actions. Spatial metaphors are also very frequent in this discourse: the most regular key points in scent description are such spatial objects as house, forest, seacoast, foreign country, and others. A very separate group of examples includes presenting of different personal associations connected with a particular scent. Such associations are unique and that is why the speakers compare the scents with something specific, not obvious for the general advertisement standards. Thus, the specific characters of odourative perception presented by the Internet discourse language are manifested mainly by the metaphorical means in verbalization of scents.

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