The concept “otvrashchenie” (disgust) I . General characteristics and stimuli of disgust

Abstract

The work discusses the general characteristics of the concept “otvrashchenie” and considers some Russian verbal and nonverbal sign means that cater for the concept. Of all the various emotions, “disgust” is distinguished by a number of features, which include: (1) a deep biological basis, by which I mean a large number of diverse, even for a single culture, verbal and nonverbal (that is purely physiological, bodily) manifestations of disgust in a human being; (2) the relative stability of body manifestations of disgust in space, time and culture. I have in mind a relatively small spatial, temporal and cultural dispersion of such manifestations across the relevant areas; (3) diverse in content and close in form connection of bodily and linguistic manifestations of emotion, which is found, in particular, in the close correlations of body language units with linguistic units related to the mental and psychological spheres of a person; (4) the high significance of cultural, cognitive and social aspects of disgust.

The main attention is paid to various objects, people and situations, which are called disgust stimuli. Different types of stimulus objects are identified and characterized: products of animal and plant origin, human and animal waste, human deformities, some artifacts. At the end of the article, the two laws are formulated, which are known in anthropology and ethnography under the names the law of similarity and the law of infection (contagiousness), which operate in the space of different stimuli of disgust.