Who do we compare ugly people with? Standards of ugliness in the Russian language

Abstract

Članek na podlagi gradiva nacionalnega korpusa ruskega jezika raziskuje kriterije človeške grdote v ruščini, izražene v primerah in metaforah. Kriteriji so vključeni v figurativno komponento pojma grdota. Njegovo bistvo je opredeljeno kot odstopanje od norme in stereotipnega videza osebe. Tematsko so kriteriji grdote združeni v skupine zoonimov, slovanskih in antičnih mitonimov ter imen literarnih likov. Kognitivna osnova za izbiro koncepta grdote je lahko arhetip ‘naš – tujec’, na primer v skupini zoonimov (opica, kamela) ali v poimenovanjih tujcev, nekrščanskih bogov (Buda, burjatski bog). Najpogostejši koncept grdote je precedenčno ime literarnega junaka – Quasimodo. Menimo, da je to posledica dejstva, da so v njegovi podobi utelešene prototipične značilnosti grdote: grba, šepanje, bradavica na obrazu. Kriteriji grdote so spolno zaznamovani, zaznamujejo bodisi moško bodisi žensko grdoto; nekateri kriteriji pa niso opredeljeni glede na spol in označujejo tako moško kot žensko grdoto, odvisno od konteksta.

The article explores the standards of human ugliness in the Russian language, expressed in comparisons and metaphors, based on the material of the National Corpus of the Russian Language. Standards are included in the figurative component of the concept “ugliness”. The essence of ugliness is defined as a deviation from the norm and stereotype of a person’s appearance. Thematically, the standards of ugliness are combined into groups of zoonyms, Slavic and antique mythonyms and names of literary heroes. The cognitive basis for choosing the standard of ugliness can be the archetype “ours” – “alien”, for example, in the group of zoonyms (monkey, marmoset, camel) or in the names of “alien”, non- Christian gods (Buddha, Buryat god). The most frequent standard of ugliness is the precedent name of the literary hero – Quasimodo. In our opinion, this is due to the fact that prototypical features of ugliness are embodied in his image: A hump, a limp, a wart on the face. Standards of ugliness are gender-marked – they characterise either male or female ugliness; some of the standards are not gender-marked and characterise both male and female ugliness, depending on the context.