Conceptualization and linguistic encodings of the two senses of smell and hearing in some selected realist and surrealist short stories from cognitive- cultural point of view

زبانشناسی و گویش های خراسان

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available Online from 13 November 2025

Document Type: Original Article

DOI: 10.22067/jlkd.2025.94670.1337

Authors

shahla sharifi^{* 1}; Nahid Behnammoghaddam²; azam estaji³

¹associate professor of linguistics, linguistics department, Ferdowsi university of mashhad

²Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

³associate professor of linguistics, linguistics department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Abstract

This study investigated the cultural-cognitive linguistic conceptualizations of the senses of smell and hearing in selected short stories from the Realism and Surrealism literary styles. This was conducted using the theoretical frameworks of Sharifian (2017) and Kövecses (2018). Primary data were collected from the texts of the chosen short stories, and Persian dictionaries were utilized for Kövecses' lexical approach.



The findings from the analyses and the Chi-square significance test revealed a significant relationship between the employment of these two senses and the two literary styles, indicating that these senses are not uniformly distributed. In the surrealist style, the source domains for the sense of smell are non-sensory, and for the sense of hearing, they are abstract; conversely, the majority of the target domains are sensory. In the realist style, however, for both senses, the source domains are sensory while the target domains are abstract.



The sense of hearing exhibits neutral cultural schemas in both styles. For the sense of smell, a negative schema is observed in surrealism, whereas a positive schema is present in realism. Metaphors related to the sense of smell align with Ullmann and Williams' pattern in both styles. In contrast, this alignment is not observed for the sense of hearing.

Keywords

conceptualization; sense of smell; sense of hearing; cognitive linguistics; cultural linguistics