| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 語言學研究所 === 106 === This study aims to explore how flavor is conceptualized crossmodally in perceptions from the perspective of cognitive linguistics by analyzing data collected from coffee cupping events in Taiwan. Although the instinctive senses of smell, taste, and flavor are shared by all, the instrumental convergence of language seems impracticable for conveying such subjective, elusive, and abstract sensation. However, it is through language that our experience of flavor can be reconstructed, evaluated, and expressed (Dyer 2011). The gap between the inexpressible nature of the so-called primitive sensations (i.e., of smell and taste) and language is bridged through figurative expressions like metaphors and similes. Notwithstanding, rarely can we identify the Chinese counterparts of English flavor descriptors, nor is the language of savoring experiences in Chinese well studied.
Although coffee cupping involves abundant crossmodal expressions, previous studies have scarcely addressed coffee cupping; instead, wine tasting is a more common topic. To bridge this research gap, the current study conducts a corpus-based investigation on cupping data involving 27,043 words from a 10-hour recording. Based on previous flavor researches (e.g., Paradis, 2013), this study places emphasis on the following three aspects to investigate the highly context-dependent synesthetic expressions (i.e., expressions of crossmodal mappings) found during coffee cupping: crossmodal metaphor (i.e., synesthetic metaphor), crossmodal metonymy (i.e., synesthetic metonymy), and crossmodal simile (i.e., synesthetic simile). However, different from the hypotheses of previous researches, we propose a novel directionality of perceptual transfers in crossmodal interactions. In fact, there is no particular rule that crossmodality in linguistic expressions must obey or violate a certain directionality in terms of the perceptual and conceptual mechanisms within sensory expressions.
According to our findings, the crossmodal metaphors featuring interactions across touch, sight, taste, and smell are regarded as synesthetic metaphors; the crossmodal metonymy is in fact transferred from the general conceptual metaphor of MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN, and is referred as synesthetic metonymy; the crossmodal associating (i.e. synesthetic simile), analyzed through Image schema and Prototype theory, constructs two pathways of both human cognition and emotion in order to perceptually comprehend and emotionally participate flavor experiences. In sum, three complicated crossmodal formations (i.e., synesthetic metaphor, metonymy, and simile) have been established simply due to the human cognitive ability to demonstrate linguistic representation as a unity of senses (see Marks, 1978).
Further, by thoroughly analyzing synesthetic forms and functions, the present study aims to deepen an understanding of the emerging role of crossmodality in flavor expressions through the elaboration of the linguistic mechanisms of flavor expressions. By analyzing the flavor expressions that occur in coffee cupping, the study turns over a new leaf in research efforts on the relations among language, cognition, and perception.
|
|---|
