Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication - Volume 23, Issue 1, 2017

Given the double nature of experiencing food as individual as well as shared experience and knowledge, the question is how to connect the observed variability of expressing such a sensory experience with a normalized requirement for developing (food) terminology. On the basis of descriptions of food experiences in actual practices involving the way food is consumed, evaluated and expressed by individuals – experts or not – in all their diversity, we propose to contribute cognitive (psychological and linguistic) expertise to terminology research. We analyze terms as cognitive units, defined within a psychological theory of natural categories as acts of meaning. In tracking the processes of terminological meaning construction in discourse we find intersubjective experience within the complex process of terminologization.

Korean has a large number of taste terms and the paradigm is continuously expanding since the lexicalization operates systematically on a few robust principles. Based on the taste terms collected from lexicons, dictionaries, web-postings, and elsewhere, we classified the terms and analyzed the lexicalization patterns. In addition to the widely-known five classes of tastes, i.e., sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami, Korean has three more classes in the basic category, i.e., pungent, fishy and bland. A large number of tactile sensory words to describe the touch sensations in the mouth at the tasting event and expressions denoting characteristic food texture and mastication also join in creating a rich taste vocabulary. The Korean taste lexicalization system is equipped with the means to signal diverse aspects of gustatory sensation, i.e., intensity, depth, purity and duration. Among such means are vowel polarity, consonantal sound symbolism, reduplication and onomatopoeia. The systematicity of taste lexicalization contributes to the plasticity of the paradigm, making the Korean taste vocabulary one of the most productive and elaborate paradigms.

Motion verbs are often used to predicate entities such as roads, paths and the like as in “The road snakes to the port of Shakespeare Bay before climbing over the last hill to Picton” or “La carretera serpentea unos 30 kilómetros entre las montañas de la cordillera Nipe”. The verbs foreground the path configuration and dynamic rendering of things that cannot move – a phenomenon known as fictive motion ( Langacker 1987 ; Talmy 1996 ). However, motion verbs are also frequent components in specialized contexts such as wine discourse, where they communicate different sensory experience of wines as in “Exotic, exuding red berry aromas and flavors that sneak up on you rather than hit you over the head”, “Bright and focused, offering delicious flavors that glide smoothly through the silky finish”, or “En boca tiene una magnifica entrada, aunque en el paso sobresalen rasgos vegetales y se precipita hacia un final en el que predominan notas tostadas y amargas”. Using two corpora of tasting notes written in English and in Spanish, I examine the motion expressions used to communicate the sensory experiences of the wines and explore the motivations for their use in descriptions of wines’ aromas, flavours and mouthfeel. Three questions are at the heart of this study. They are (i) what types of scenarios are described through motion expressions, (ii) what sensory perceptions do they describe, and (iii) what may the differences between English and Spanish be?

Of all the varieties of sensory experience, wine appreciation seems to be one of the most rewarding yet also one of the most challenging to verbalize. This is largely due to a lack of scientific terminology capable of describing sensory impressions (in turn related to how little is known about human perception). Wine language is highly unspecific and figurative, depending on a weakly standardized community practice rather than a solid and comprehensive range of descriptors. In this paper I study figurative language and verbal creativity in a corpus of 12,000 English and Spanish wine reviews by focusing specifically on metaphor and synesthesia as the resources that best exemplify (and often manage to overcome) many of the genre’s shortcomings. In addition to the discussion of quantitative results, a case study in synesthesia is offered as illustration of the genre’s complexities, complemented by a contrastive discussion of how similar difficulties are handled in different ways in English and Spanish.

In winespeak, metaphors are a real challenge for the translator. Indeed, many metaphoric expressions cannot be found in dictionaries and their true meaning is not defined. The only basis for their translation seems to be the conceptual basis they are built upon. Indeed, wine tasting metaphors are linguistic realisations of conceptual metaphors, with mappings from well-known domains used to understand and communicate the intangible experience of taste. Various conceptual metaphors appear in the same tasting note, creating a complex blend, or conceptual integration pattern. So the translation procedures generally put forward in translation studies, based on the linguistic conception of metaphor, appear inappropriate. The cognitive translation hypothesis offers a good basis to compare source and target text wine-tasting metaphors.

Descriptors of sensory experience are known to be crucial in trying to objectify the world. New descriptors are coined to express the enhanced experience of a reality experienced by human beings. In this article we illustrate the cognitive and cross-cultural framing for verbalizing sensory experience discussing the indeterminacy and vagueness of the wine descriptor minerality and the successful universal neologism smoothie, a product name for a new product. Both case studies concern units of understanding that are difficult to define but that are related to products with high marketing potential. First we refer to the expert literature in food studies dealing with minerality and smoothies. Then we report on observations based on discourse oriented empirical heuristics and surveying. Finally we discuss in how far experiencing food and drinks is culture-bound and language-specific, which implies that translating food descriptions may be a daunting task.

In this study on food terminology and culture, Frame-based Terminology Theory (FBT) ( Faber 2012 , 2015 ) was combined with corpus analysis to explore the use of culture-specific terms in the food categories of bread and rice. For the sake of comparison, semplates ( Levinson and Burenhult 2009 ; Burenhult 2008 ) were formulated for food, bread, and rice, as a kind of cultural frame to highlight the relatedness of these categories, based on the actions that were most frequently linked to them in our corpus. For this purpose, an FBT semantic analysis of these terms in a general language corpus was combined with an analysis of their cultural contexts in the literary work of authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Najat El Hachmi, Chimamanda Adichie, and others. The situations portrayed in their novels reflect the cultural embeddedness of food and its communicative value.