The Semantics of Beauty in Spanish Adjectives: Conceptual Structure and Implications for Folk Aesthetics

This article presents an analysis of Spanish adjectives that express positive aesthetic evaluation, framed in terms of Conceptual Semantics. The sample of ninety-six adjectives (with one hundred and forty-eight individual meanings) was taken from the Diccionario ideográfico y semántico de la valoración estética positiva en español. Semantic analysis of dictionary definitions showed that beauty is ascribed by way of three distinct conceptual structures, with beauty seen respectively as an intrinsic quality, as cause or effect or as a resemblance. It further showed a clear prevalence of visual attributes and part structure as targets of aesthetic evaluation, with other secondary qualities (like daintiness, perfection, effort, grace, taste and uniqueness) also being ascribed. A quantitative analysis yielded informative correlations between some of these pieces of semantic information, in the form of asymmetries between human and non-human beauty, which point to some interesting implications and questions for Spanish folk aesthetics.