“What is beauty?” Cultural semantics of the Russian folk aesthetics

The paper studies the semantics of four Russian key terms of aesthetic evaluation: krasivyj ‘beautiful’, prekrasnyj ‘beautiful/fine’, nekrasivyj ’ugly/plain’ and bezobraznyj ‘ugly/frightful’. It demonstrates different patterns of polysemy of the words and the nuances of meaning. Following the framework of folk aesthetics and cultural semantics, the meanings of the terms in question are represented using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and are shown to relate to Russian cultural themes. The analysis demonstrates cultural significance of aesthetic value in Russian and its intrinsic link with ethics, morality and politeness.