Development of Technical Wine Assessment Skills in Tertiary Students

Learning to objectively evaluate wine sensory properties (such as appearance, aroma, flavour, taste and mouthfeel attributes) features prominently in wine education programs. Formal, structured sensory classes that involve recording detailed observations and perceptions is the traditional approach to build perceptual and linguistic learning. This research explored students’ behaviour in maintaining wine tasting notes and their perceptions of wine sensory classes by survey across four Australian institutions (n=109) and by focus groups (n=24). International students were not as confident in class room discussions or describing wine, and did not perform as well in sensory exams, suggesting that language ability and/or cultural/life experience is important for technical wine assessment. Given that 98% of students surveyed owned a smartphone, mobile learning may provide an opportunity to enhance and facilitate learning of wine sensory analysis outside of the classroom. The My Wine WorldTM App (developed for smartphones) was evaluated by academic staff and students as a potentially valuable e-learning tool for the development of perceptual and linguistic memory of sensory attributes

Wine communication in a global market: a study of metaphor through the genre of Australian wine reviews

This thesis is a report on wine communication focused on metaphoric language identified in the genre of wine reviews. Specifically, the research centred on Australian wine reviews written by Australian wine critics about Australian wines currently exported to the greater China region. In the genre of wine reviews, metaphoric expressions are frequently used to talk about wine (Caballero & Suárez-Toste, 2008). The thesis developed understanding of the influence of metaphoric language and its potential to constrain or motivate people’s sensory and affective responses to wine and highlighted the need to consider congruency of metaphoric language in terms of wine communication and education. The research was theoretically framed by the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and took a cognitive linguistic perspective to metaphor analysis (Croft & Cruse, 2004). Wine appreciation was argued to be a social event in contrast to an observational event. From this perspective, wine appreciation is concerned with influencing audience perceptions in contrast to a spontaneous commentary of an event. The thesis presents the findings of two qualitative studies that used a corpus approach to metaphor use and understanding in the genre of wine reviews. The investigation identified metaphoric expressions in Australian wine reviews and went on to explore their understanding and transfer by wine educators in Australia and China. Metaphor identification used the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (Steen et al., 2010) and the UCREL Semantic Annotation System (Archer et al., 2004) for semantic and conceptual analysis. Results indicated six underpinning metaphoric themes (i.e., AN OBJECT, A THREE DIMENSIONAL ARTEFACT, AN INSTITUTIONAL ARTEFACT, A TEXTILE, A LIVING ORGANISM, and A PERSON) of which spatial and temporal properties were often integrated. A comparison of wine educator responses to interpretation and transmission tasks showed that anthropomorphic metaphor (i.e., WINE IS A PERSON) tended to be conceptualized similarly by participants more often than other metaphoric themes. In conclusion, the cultural artefact of language used in the genre of wine reviews and the metaphoric potential of linguistic choices on sensory and affective perceptions indicates a need for the consideration of congruency when wine communication crosses cultural and linguistic borders

Metaphor and Senses

The book deals with the synesthetic metaphors in Synamet – a semantically and grammatically annotated corpus. The texts included in the corpus are excerpted from blogs devoted to, among others, perfume, wine, beer, music, art, massage and wellness. The thesis presents a Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and frame-based analysis of synesthetic metaphors in Polish. Using data from the corpus, the book provides ample empirical support for embodiment in metaphor and internal logic of mappings between frames. The study proposes new models of verbal synesthesia in the corpus and calls into question a universality of hierarchy of senses. This book should be of interest to researchers working within cognitive linguistics, in particular metaphor theory, frame semantics, corpus linguistics, and sensory science

Culinary Linguistics

Language and food are universal to humankind. Language accomplishes more than a pure exchange of information, and food caters for more than mere subsistence. Both represent crucial sites for socialization, identity construction, and the everyday fabrication and perception of the world as a meaningful, orderly place. This volume contains an introduction to the study of food and an extensive overview of the literature focusing on its role in interplay with language. It is the only publication fathoming the field of food and food-related studies from a linguistic perspective. The research articles assembled here encompass a number of linguistic fields, ranging from historical and ethnographic approaches to literary studies, the teaching of English as a foreign language, psycholinguistics, and the study of computer-mediated communication, making this volume compulsory reading for anyone interested in genres of food discourse and the linguistic connection between food and culture

An exploration of evaluative meanings in tourist brochures : the case of British castles

Maestría en Lenguas Inglesa con orientación en Lingüística AplicadaFil: Faletti, Paula M. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina.The focus of analysis in the present study will be on how writers establish evaluative prosodies that resonate across their promotional discourse and try to accomplish reader positioning by means of their semantic choices. It seems pertinent, then, to bring into play a model of discourse analysis apposite to the study of evaluative resources. The theory drawn upon for this study is Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceforth SFL), which will be delineated in the following chapter (Halliday, 1994, 2004; Martin, 2000, 2002, 2004; Martin & Rose, 2003, 2007). SFL theorises language as social semiotic, as a meaning-making system from which users choose linguistic resources when they engage in communication. It regards language as organised into different strata and performing three major metafunctions: it construes a world of experience (ideational metafunction), it establishes relationships between people (interpersonal metafunction) and it organises discourse (textual metafunction). In SFL the meaning potential of language is described in terms of interrelating sets of options organised as systems (Economou, 2009). Meaning is realised metafunctionally –as interpersonal, ideational and textual meanings– by the choices language users make out of the possibilities available in the language systems. In other words, meaning choices can be realised across different systems of lexicogrammar (Hood, 2004). EVALUATION1 , alongside INVOLVEMENT and NEGOTIATION, is one of three major resources that construe interpersonal meaning. It is located in the interpersonal dimension of language, at the level of discourse semantics – the stratum that maps meaning systems available at the level of text. Analysing Evaluation in language involves the study of the resources writers make use of when adopting a particular stance in an attempt to align the readers with the value position advanced in the text. These aspects of the interpersonal metafunction have been elaborated on by Martin (2000), Martin and Rose (2003), and Martin and White (2005) in the APPRAISAL model.Fil: Faletti, Paula M. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina

Le goût d'Orval: constructing the taste of Orval beer through narratives

This study explores the construction of taste through narratives, using Orval beer as a case study. Often found on lists of the best or most unique beers in the world, Orval is a bottle conditioned, dry-hopped strong Belgian ale with Brettanomyces yeast, creating an orange-hue beer topped with a large volume of white foam. It is both easy to drink and complex in flavour. Made in southeastern Belgium within the walls of a Trappist Abbey, Orval is closely associated with the country of Belgium, a pilgrimage site for beer lovers because of its unique and diverse beer culture. In 2016 “Beer Culture in Belgium” was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Orval beer also carries the Authentic Trappist Product label, ensuring that this product is brewed under the supervision of Trappist monks or nuns, within the Abbey walls, and is non-profit. Additionally, the beer has a unique, distinctive taste. This dissertation explores narratives that tell of all these aspects. The first section, Narrating Belgium, examines how social and economic histories build Belgium as a beer nation, and how conversion narratives of Belgian beer enthusiasts support this theory. The Narrating Trappist section examines how the Legend of Orval and the history of Orval Abbey create a sense of place for Orval beer and how the Authentic Trappist Product label helps construct its terroir. The last section, Narrating Taste, focuses on narratives of taste as shared in online reviews of Orval beer. I first conduct lexical and network analysis of reviews on Untappd, RateBeer, and BeerAdvocate before focusing specifically on themes found in BeerAdvocate reviews. Through ethnographic and textual research, this dissertation introduces a folkloristic approach to taste and argues that both contextual and sensory elements are essential in building taste through narratives