Linguocultural Specificity of Vocabulary Objectifying the Situation of Olfactory Perception in Proverbs Collected by V.I. Dal

The study examines proverbs that represent the situation of olfactory perception from a linguocultural perspective. The relevance of the work is determined by the following factors: the active development of linguistic sensory studies and linguoculturology, which focus on humans and how they interpret the facts of the surrounding reality; the interest in folklore texts that allow for the reconstruction of folk representations of the world; and the possibility of integrating the research into the scientific context and expanding the understanding of the semantics of olfactory perception and its national-cultural specificity in folk sayings. The aim of the study is to investigate the literal and figurative meanings of lexical units that objectify the situation of olfactory perception in proverbs and to identify the linguocultural information they contain. The research material consists of proverbs from V.I. Dal’s collection “Proverbs of the Russian People”, which verbalize the situation of olfactory perception. The analyzed corpus of folk sayings comprises 66 units. The study employs methods such as the descriptive method, component and contextual analysis, and semantic analysis. The research demonstrates that olfactory verbs in proverbs realize both literal and figurative, culturally conditioned meanings. In folk culture, verbs such as sniff, sense, smell, stink, emit a smell are associated with unpleasant odors and are used to characterize individuals, their negative traits, social status, and various life situations. The verbs sniff, stink, smell emphasize a person’s low social status, occupation, and objectify qualities such as duplicity, cunning, and aggression. The verbs sniff and sense highlight the discrepancy between a person’s desires and their capabilities. The verbs smell and reek – serve as markers of something bad or illegal. In folk consciousness, negative things tend to leave traces and persist in memory for a long time. The verb smell verbalizes the categories of “life” and “death”, objectifying the idea that the approach of certain events (often negative) is accompanied by olfactory signs. The verb sniff denotes not only the perception of smells but also the experience of need and deprivation. This verb is associated with the manifestation of caution.