37.2014, Calls: Lexis - Journal in English Lexicology - "Special Issue: Words about… #3 – Words about Olfaction" (Jrnl)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2014. Mon Jun 08 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2014, Calls: Lexis - Journal in English Lexicology - "Special Issue: Words about… #3 – Words about Olfaction" (Jrnl)

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Date: 06-Jun-2026
From: Denis Jamet-Coupé [denis.jamet-coupe at univ-lyon3.fr]
Subject: Lexis - Journal in English Lexicology - "Special Issue: Words about… #3 – Words about Olfaction" (Jrnl)


Journal: Lexis - Journal in English Lexicology
Issue: “Words about…” #3 – Words about Olfaction
Call Deadline: 15-Nov-2026

Words about Olfaction:
https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/10669
The third issue of the “Words about...” series hosted by Lexis –
Journal in English Lexicology focuses on “Words about Olfaction”.
Triangulations between language, perception, and the language of
perception have been discussed continuously since antiquity in fields
ranging from philosophy to biology. This issue of “Words about…”
tackles the topic of the language of olfaction given the relatively
low number of studies dedicated to this sensory modality compared to
the other four Aristotelian sensory modalities, i.e. sight, hearing,
touch, and taste (Lorig [1999], Winter [2019]). Linguists studying the
expression of sensory modalities typically prioritize senses that are
considered codable, i.e. legible in a normative system (see Berlin &
Kay [1969] on color classification), on the grounds of the feasibility
and reproducibility of experiments if data were available and
attainable. For instance, in English, it is “easier to linguistically
code colors than (non-musical) sounds, than tastes, than smells”
according to Levinson & Majid [2014: 415]; similarly, “it is generally
thought that sight is the most codable sensory modality, with
linguists having suggested that there is more lexical differentiation
for visual concepts in the world’s languages than for the other
senses” according to Winter [2019: 33]. The English language
facilitates the linguistic codability of colors while curbing that of
odors (Viberg [1984]; Levinson & Majid [2014]), simply due to the
greater number of lexemes referring to vision than those referring to
smell. For instance, Lievers & Winter [2018: 20] retrieved data from
multiple studies on English sensory modalities, and across their
various quantitative datasets they found that about 27 to 57% of
sensory lexemes are visual, while only about 4 to 10% of sensory
lexemes are olfactory. Their calculations show that vision is always
ranked first in terms of the number of lexemes, whereas olfaction is
always ranked last.
Based on the observations regarding the scarcity of lexical means to
refer to olfaction in English or French, olfaction has received little
attention (Buck [1949]; Classen, Howes & Synnott [1994]; Majid [2001];
Kleiber & Vuillaume [2011]; Majid & Burenhult [2014]; Digonnet
[2016]). This poverty in codability is articulated as ineffability and
defined as the inability or difficulty in finding words to describe a
particular experience (Lorig [1999]; Levinson & Majid [2014]). This
linguistic codability differs from one language to another: the Jahai
people, an indigenous group of the Semang population in Malaysia and
parts of Thailand, have no difficulty naming olfactory experiences in
Maniq (Levinson & Majid [2014]). In addition, the Chachi (or Capaya)
people of Ecuador who speak Cha Apalache use a lexicon of the
olfactory domain to speak about animals, plants, human activities and
time, as perfumes play a key role for these people in traditional
rituals and folk tales (Floyd, Roque & Majid [2018]).
Lexis being a French-based, open-edition journal about English
linguistics, welcomes contributions discussing linguistic phenomena in
English or French. Contributions focusing on words about olfaction in
other languages should contrast their findings with similar studies
about English or French.
Papers can examine the ineffability of olfaction either quantitatively
or qualitatively comparing it to the linguistic codability of the
other Aristotelian sensory modalities. Papers may also study
ineffability by analyzing lexical and semantic tools used to overcome
onomasiological gaps: conceptual metaphors (detecting is smelling),
adjectival constructions (musky perfume), prepositional constructions
(the smell of cheese), synesthesia (this thing stinks out loud), and
like-comparison (smells like teen spirit).
Olfactory words can be studied from a diachronic perspective: are
there any attested lexical and semantic neologies in the olfaction
domain? Lexical neologies are understood as the creation of new
lexical forms, while semantic neologies are understood as the
acquisition of a new meaning by an existing lexical form (Bauer
[2001]). The latter can be illustrated by diachronic semantic changes
which lexical items undergo such as the trajectory of pejoration of
the verb reek. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, reek
evolved from referring to “of something burning or smouldering: to
emit or give off smoke. Also figurative.” (Old English) to denoting
“figurative and in extended use. To be strongly suggestive or
reminiscent of something unpleasant, disreputable or undesirable. With
of, with.” (1679). Moreover, the former type of neology can be
illustrated by the coinage of the blend smellscape (smell +
landscape), defined as “the olfactory environment as perceived and
understood, consisting of odours and scents from multiple smell
sources” by Lindborg & Liew [2021]. Consequently, is there any
observable diachronic change in the productivity of olfactory lexemes
or olfactory semantic change?
On the other hand, are there any attested disappearance, obsolescence,
or death of olfactory lexemes and lexical senses? In other words, are
there any attested necrologies? For instance, are there any attested
examples in contemporary English of the verb stink referring to the
obsolete sense in the Oxford English Dictionary “intransitive To emit
a smell or vapour of any kind; to smell (sweetly or otherwise).
Obsolete.”; and can the absence or scarcity of data of this ineffable
sensory modality be viewed as proof of necrology? Papers can also
discuss:
 - The lexicalization of olfactory lexemes, defined as the
establishment of a lexical unit having a form and a meaning in a
language (Bauer [2001]): in Doesn’t it smell fishy a lawmaker comes
out -- there is not a big tween lobby out this state? I mean, it’s
like is the liquor industry pushing him to do this?1, the lexical unit
smell fishy is established as referring to suspicion and not to a
smell of fish.
 - The semantic change of olfactory lexemes: a smell referring to a
very small amount or a hint of something is an attested sense in the
Merriam Webster, such as add only a smell of garlic2, and,
 - The frozenness of sequences, understood as the degree to which
multi-word units become conventionalized and resistant to syntactic
variation such as in If you don’t come clean, your whole campaign will
stink to high heaven3.
The focus of this issue in its nature is language, and contributions
are encouraged to analyze linguistic data from a wide range of
possible corpora. In addition to token search with online corpora, the
olfactory lexicon can be analyzed by examining publications in
biological or medical fields about the trajectory of smells from its
source to the brain, the anthropology of odors and its relationship to
the negative semantic prosody of olfaction in European languages,
advertisements promoting perfumes, literary and artistic works
tackling smells, perfumery documentaries, movies, and TV series.
Papers can address issues ranging from the linguistic theory of
sensory modalities to introducing new methodologies of data collection
and annotation of the olfactory lexicon. Papers can examine the
description of memory (short-term memory vs. long-term memory) and the
use of semiotic tools to describe olfaction (images, sounds,
artefacts, etc.), in addition to input from cognitive linguistics,
theory of enunciative operations, discourse analysis, or the
pragmatics of smells. Linguistic insights into context-based lexicon
access, the diachronic frequency of metaphorical constructions, the
semantic affinity of collocations, and the semantic prosody of
olfaction are particularly welcome.
Selected References :
Bauer, Laurie. 2001. Morphological productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Berlin, Brent, & Paul Kay. 1969. Basic color terms: their universality
and evolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: the University of California
Press. xi-178.
Classen, Constance, David Howes & Anthony Synnott. 2002. Aroma: The
cultural history of smell. London: Routledge.
Digonnet, Rémi. 2016. Métaphore et olfaction : Une approche cognitive.
Paris: Honoré Champion.
Dury, Pascaline & Patrick Drouin. 2010. L’obsolescence des termes en
langues de spécialité : Une étude semi-automatique de la « nécrologie
» en corpus informatisés, appliquée au domaine de l’écologie. In
Proceedings of the XVII European LSP Symposium 2009. 1–11.
Floyd, Simeon, Lila San Roque & Asifa Majid. 2018. Smell is coded in
grammar and frequent in discourse: Cha’palaa olfactory language in
cross-linguistic perspective. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
28(2): 175–196.
Gisborne, Nikolas. 1996. English perception verbs. Doctoral
dissertation, University College London.
Gisborne, Nikolas. 2010. The event structure of perception verbs.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide. 1999. Metaphorical mappings in the sense
of smell. In: Gibbs, R. & Steen, G. ed. Metaphor in Cognitive
Linguistics: Selected papers from the 5th International Cognitive
Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997. John Benjamins Publishing
Company. 29-46. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.175.03iba
Kleiber, Georges & Marcel Vuillaume. 2011. Pour une linguistique des
odeurs : présentation. Langages 181(1). 3–15.
https://shs.cairn.info/revue-langages-2011-1-page-3?lang=fr
Lang, J., H. H. Shi & Zhendong Jing-Schmidt. 2025. Beyond smell:
Rethinking the figurative force of olfactory language. Corpus
Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2025-0001
Levinson, Stephen C. & Asifa Majid. 2014. Differential ineffability
and the senses. Mind & Language 29(4): 407–427.
Lievers, Francesca S. & Bodo Winter. 2018. Sensory language across
lexical categories. Lingua 204: 45–61.
Lindborg, PerMagnus & Kongmeng Liew. 2021. Real and imagined
smellscapes. Frontiers in Psychology 12: 718172.
Moon, Rosamund. 1998. Fixed expressions and idioms in English: A
corpus-based approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Popova, Yanna B. 2003. The fool sees with his nose: Metaphoric
mappings in the sense of smell in Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. Language
and Literature 12(2): 135–151.
Viberg, Åke. 1983. The verbs of perception: A typological study.
Linguistics 21(1): 123–162. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1983.21.1.123
Winter, Bodo. 2019. Sensory linguistics: Language, perception and
metaphor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
How to Submit:
Please clearly indicate the title of the paper and include an abstract
between 3,000 and 6,000 characters (including spaces) as well as a
list of relevant keywords and references. All abstract and paper
submissions will be anonymously peer-reviewed (double-blind peer
reviewing) by an international scientific committee composed of
specialists in their fields. Papers will be written preferably in
English or occasionally in French.
Manuscripts may be rejected, accepted subject to revision, or accepted
as such. Contributions will not exceed 55,000 signs.
Submissions (abstracts and articles) will be uploaded onto the
journal’s submission platform. If you encounter any problem, please
send a message to Lexis.
Deadlines:
 - June 2026: Call for papers
 - November 15 2026: Deadline for submitting abstracts to Lexis via
the journal’s submission platform
 - January 2027: Evaluation Committee’s decisions notified to authors
 - May 30 2027: Deadline for submitting papers via the journal’s
submission platform (Guidelines for submitting articles:
https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/1000)
 - June and July 2027: Proofreading of papers by the Evaluation
committee
 - September to October 2027: Authors’ corrections
 - November 1st 2027: Deadline for sending in final versions of papers

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Lexicography
                     Morphology
                     Semantics
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)




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