Axiological antinomy in odorative microsystem of Russian language (on the basis of perfume discourse)

The current article investigates the features of the subjective assessment of odor perception and verbalization using the material of texts collected from the perfume Internet forums. The author points out that one way to describe the olfactory impression is the comparison of personal perceptive experience with the same or different opinion of others regarding the perception of the chosen scent. Thus, the research identifies a benchmark with some characteristics of perfumes with rather stable assessing associations. These associations indicate some tight and fixed axiological interpretation of odorative impressions in native speaker’s mind. For example, the perfume online discourse can contain both positive and negative assessment of person’s scent by other people. In the first (positive) case the spectrum of odor standards is quite limited and based mainly on the combination of taste and olfactory perception. The second (negative) case uses the olfactory perception and through this perception it shows the actualization of negative images of the person from different perspectives (age, appearance, gender, field of activity etc.). These images are connected with old age, death, chemicals, medicines etc. In other words, Internet communication gives a range of various scent qualifiers with the embedded assessment.