Este estudio explora las expresiones emocionales utilizadas por hablantes de diversas variantes dialectales del español para describir sus experiencias estéticas. Con este objetivo, se analizará un corpus de reseñas publicadas en una popular red social para viajeros, centrándonos específicamente en las referidas a las Pirámides de Giza (Egipto). El estudio identifica y examina tanto las expresiones literales como figurativas empleadas para transmitir diferentes emociones estéticas. Muchas de estas expresiones están vinculadas a reacciones somáticas específicas experimentadas por los individuos. Aprovechando las conexiones sistemáticas entre estas respuestas somáticas y las correspondientes emociones estéticas, esta investigación establece vínculos conceptuales entre las expresiones lingüísticas y un grupo bien definido de emociones estéticas descritas en la literatura reciente. Los principales resultados demuestran estas conexiones conceptuales y ofrecen una visión sobre la representación lingüística de las emociones estéticas. El estudio concluye destacando posibles direcciones futuras de investigación sobre la expresión lingüística de las emociones estéticas y la interacción entre lenguaje, cultura y experiencias estéticas. Palabras clave: emociones estéticas, metáfora, metonimia, corporeización, variación. Abstract In this study, I explore the emotional expressions used by speakers of various dialectal varieties of Spanish when describing their experiences at artistic sites. With this aim, I will analyze a corpus of reviews posted on a popular social network for travelers, focusing specifically on the Giza Pyramids in Egypt. The study identifies and examines both literal and figurative expressions used to convey ACCESO ABIERTO / OPEN ACCESS Cita: Díaz-Vera, Javier E. (2024). La expresión lingüística de las emociones estéticas: una propuesta para su estudio. Textos en Proceso, 10(1), pp. 59-76.

This paper explores the processes of identity construction and negotiation through face work in a Portuguese Inquisition record, corresponding to the trial for Judaism of Catarina de Orta. Concentrating as much on the inquisitor’s questions as on the answers offered by the defendant, I show here that impoliteness and self-politeness co-occur in interaction in the Portuguese Inquisition courtroom discourse. On the one hand, the inquisitor makes abundant use of impoliteness strategies with at least three main aims: to exert his power over the defendant, to trigger specific negative emotions, and to attack her face and her credibility. On the other hand, the defendant’s answers display numerous features of self-politeness, aimed at saving her face from the inquisitor’s attacks and accusations. It is precisely through the interplay of impoliteness and self-politeness that the two competing narratives proposed by the accuser and the defendant are constructed and re-elaborated during every interrogation.

In recent years, the study of emotion metaphors and metonymies has broadened our understanding of how people conceptualise and verbalise their emotional experiences. While some emotion source domains appear to be culture-specific, others are widely employed to denominate the same emotion. One of these potentially universal source domains, temperature, appears to be widely used by speakers from different areas to derive figurative expressions for positive and negative emotions. However, the systematic study of this emotion source domain remains uncharted territory, and numerous fundamental questions about the relations between emotions and temperature remain untouched. This study aims at approaching the question of whether, and to what extent, the motif emotion is temperature illustrates the existence of a universalist embodiment model or, on the contrary, it is a result of historical and cultural variation. With this aim, using cognitive semantic methodology, I will scrutinize the complete corpus of Old English texts (850-1100) to provide a fine-grained analysis of the expressions for positive emotions rooted in the source domain high body temperature used by Old English authors. Generally speaking, this source domain indicates negative experience, which is why it has normally been studied in the context of negative (and, in consequence, unpleasant) emotional experiences. However, as the findings of this study show, the existence in Old English of the conceptual mapping positive emotion is high body temperature challenges our previous understanding of temperature metaphors as a product of universal embodiment, thus contributing to the current debate on metaphors as culture loaded expressions.

Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory, I propose a study of aesthetic emotional expressions in Japanese. With this aim, I have created a medium-sized corpus (c100,000 running words) of travellers’ reviews in Japanese published on TripAdvisor between 2012 and 2022. The corpus consists of 1,100 reviews, grouped into three subsections, corresponding to three of the most visited landmarks in Japan (namely, Mount Fuji, Fushimi Inari-Taisha Shrine, and the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dome). The reviews chosen for this research include at least one reference, either literal or figurative, to the users’ aesthetic evaluation of their visit. My list of aesthetic emotions consists of four large categories: emotions of pleasure (e.g., attraction, fluency), emotions of contemplation (e.g., interest, intrigue), emotions of amazement (e.g., awe, wonder), and emotions of respect (e.g., admiration, adoration). For each aesthetic emotion, I have identified a series of source domains, which I analyse in detail in my discussion. As my data shows, many of our aesthetic expressions are rooted in the psychological and behavioural changes triggered by these emotions and, therefore, should be considered embodied. More importantly, through the analysis of the conceptual mappings involved in these linguistic expressions, it can be affirmed that aesthetic reactions are sensitive to cultural influences and, thus, they are not necessarily universal.