Emotion concept disgust and its German counterparts: Equivalence determination based on language corpora data

Abstract

Our two-stage methodology was tested in order to determine the most accurate equivalent for Anglo-Saxon emotion concept (EC) disgust among German ekel, abneigung, abneigung and abscheu. At the first stage, the authors identified the closest in terms of content equivalents to disgust on the basis of the comparison of the German ECs names definitions in explanatory and bilingual dictionaries. It was established that equivalence with disgust, albeit incomplete, is shown only by the nouns Ekel and Abscheu, which are so semantically close to each other that they can be used interchangeably in some contexts. At the second stage, on the basis of a comparative analysis of the most frequent collocates of the concept names disgust, ekel and abscheu in representative corpora of the English and German languages, (a) the relevant content of these concepts was established and (b) a comparison of their semantic structures was made according to the criteria of arousal and valence. A comparison of the semantic structures of disgust, ekel and abscheu revealed that both German concepts show numerous overlaps with disgust. At the same time, abscheu is semantically more similar to disgust than ekel. This indicates that the transfer of disgust to the German language community by means of ekel and abscheu can be quite adequate, since both of these concepts evoke associations in representatives of German-speaking culture similar to those that arise in Anglo-Saxons in connection with disgust.