The Perception of Rice and Its Linguistic Expression in Chinese and Japanese

• Main Authors: Hsieh Ming Che, 謝明哲
• Other Authors: Rik De Busser
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/51277990659152141552

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 語言學研究所 === 104 === Senses are undoubtedly important to people because they allow us to experience our world and we would face difficulties when any of them were absent. However, senses are not equally important in linguistic expressions. It seems that expressing odors is difficult in some languages because people often rely on concrete objects to make olfactory expressions, such as cǎo de weìdào ‘the smell of grass.’ Making use of color rather than concrete objects for visual expressions, we often choose lán ‘blue’ rather than tiānkōng de yánsè ‘the color of sky’ when expressing what we feel from sky. Is it possible that different emphasis of senses can be observed in different languages? If so, what is the reason leading to the differences in languages? Observing how people express their feeling toward food is an appropriate method to discuss sensory expressions, because the procedure of tasting food is strongly correlated with multiple senses like vision, odor, taste, and mouthfeel. This study collects sensory expressions of food from both Chinese and Japanese speakers, including both experts and novices of cooking. Acting as the main dish in Chinese and Japanese cultures, rice is regarded as the theme of interview due to the cultural importance. If all senses are important in different cultures, they should be expressed in similar ways. Our results suggest that Chinese mainly focuses on mouthfeel, while Japanese mainly focuses on vision when performing sensory expressions. The differences in sensory expressions can also be observed through comparing experts with novices: experts mainly focus on vision, and novices firstly choose taste. People also make use of different cognitive strategies to express different kinds of senses, but both experts and novices rely on the evaluative type to create sensory expressions. Sensory expressions are different between Chinese and Japanese although senses are physiologically identical for people. This study suggests that both culture and social factors influence sensory expressions in languages.