DOI: 10.4312/elope.10.1.23-35
E.
Silva Bratož
Pedagoška fakulteta Univerza na Primorskem
he Anthropomorphic Metaphor in Slovene and English Wine Tasting Discourses
Summary
he language used to describe the tastes of various wines ranges from specific references to chemical, vegetal and mineral components to a wealth of diverse metaphorical constructions. his paper explores the use and characteristics of the anthropomorphic metaphor in wine reviews from a cross—linguistic perspective. he theoretical framework relies on the cognitive approach to metaphor, most notably on the conceptual theory of metaphor. he case study presented is focused on the conceptual metaphor WINE IS A HUMAN BEING and its linguistic realisations in a corpus of wine reviews collected from selected Slovene and English sources. A number of metaphors will be examined with respect to their level of conventionality, from metaphorically motivated terminology to novel linguistic metaphors. It will be argued that despite some variations in the way metaphors are realised in English and Slovene wine discourses, there is a large overlap in the way the two languages conceptualise the taste of wine through the anthropomorphic metaphor.
Key words: conceptual metaphor, wine discourse, anthropomorphic metaphor, wine tasting notes, cross—linguistic analysis.
Antropomorfna metafora v slovenskem in angleškem vinskem diskurzu
Povzetek
Jezik, ki ga uporabljamo pri ocenjevanju raznovrstnih vin, vsebuje tako podatke o specifičnih kemijskih, rastlinskih in mineralnih lastnostih kot tudi široko paleto metaforičnega izrazja. Prispevek obravnava rabo in značilnosti antropomorfne metafore v ocenah vin z medjezikovnega vidika. Teoretični okvir temelji na kognitivnem pristopu k metafori, in sicer zlasti na konceptualni teoriji metafore. V članku je predstavljena študija primera, ki obravnava konceptualno metaforo VINO JE ČLOVEŠKO BITJE in njene jezikovne realizacije v korpusu vinskih ocen iz izbranih slovenskih in angleških virov. Analizirane so številne metafore z vidika konvencionalnosti, od metaforično motiviranih terminov do izvirnih jezikovnih metafor. Rezultati raziskave nakazujejo, da se navzlic nekaterim variacijam, ki smo jih prepoznali med slovenskim in angleškim vinskim diskurzom, konceptualizacija okusa vina skozi antropomorfno metaforo v slovenščini in angleščini v večji meri prekriva.
Ključne besede: konceptualna metafora, vinski diskurz, antropomorfna metafora, ocenjevanje vin, medjezikovna analiza.
he Anthropomorphic Metaphor in Slovene and English Wine Tasting Discourses
1. Introduction
he overall purpose of the present paper is to look at various aspects of metaphors in the language of wine tasting and identify the main characteristics of metaphors in this specialist discourse. In methodological terms, the study is largely indebted to the conceptual theory of metaphor as one of the more prominent frameworks within cognitive linguistics which focuses on metaphors as forms of organising conceptual structure and as language phenomena which play a significant role in our everyday language (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1993; Gibbs 2008). In addition, we have recently witnessed an important trend towards applying the theory across languages. A major influence in this development is the work of Kövecses (2005) on universality and cultural variation in metaphor and metonymy. Underlying these efforts is the belief that a number of insights into the importance of metaphors as mirrors of our cultural and social environment can be gained by analysing metaphors contrastively. Besides the cognitive framework, the paper brings to the foreground two other linguistic areas which are increasingly recognising the importance of metaphor in their research; i.e. the study of discourse and terminology. From a discourse perspective, metaphors are seen as distinguishing features of various discourses (Bratož 2011), while according to the terminological approach, metaphors play a crucial role in lexicalisation processes, giving birth to a number of metaphorically motivated terms (Temmerman 2000).
With the cognitive approach to metaphor the focus has shifted from analysing metaphors almost exclusively at the linguistic level to accentuating the cognitive, communicative, and cultural aspects of metaphor (see Gibbs 2008 for an overview). he conceptual theory of metaphor delineated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and extensively developed thereafter has been seen as one of the most influential paradigms within the cognitive movement which has strengthened the connection between metaphor and thought by proposing that the conceptual system is not only involved in the processing of metaphor but that thought is itself structured metaphorically and that the systematic nature of metaphor on the surface of language merely reflects underlying conceptual structures in which something is understood, stored and processed in terms of something else. Metaphors are defined as means of conceptualising more abstract areas of our experience in terms of the familiar and concrete. hey involve a source domain (usually concrete and familiar), a target domain (usually abstract or less structured), and a set of mapping relations or correspondences (Lakoff 1993). For example, in the conceptual metaphor WINE IS A HUMAN BEING, the target domain is wine and the source domain is represented by the concept human being. By mapping the domain of wine onto the domain of human being we can identify a number of correspondences; wine is conceptualised as having a body, an age, a personality and so forth.
Several authors (Suarez—Toste 2007; Lehrer 2009; Caballero 2009) have argued that metaphors thoroughly pervade the wine tasting discourse. To account for the diversity of sensations in the wine tasting activity, a number of metaphorical extensions are used which rely on various source domains, such as plants, objects, human beings and others. One of the most pervasive schemas in the wine tasting discourse is personification, which is the source of several metaphorically motivated
2. Metaphors in discourse
Type of discourse	Conceptual metaphor	Mappings
Political discourse	ELECTIONS ARE A BATTLE	Political candidates are enemies at war, warriors, they have camps, conduct campaigns, etc.
Economic discourse	ECONOMY IS A PATIENT	Economies may be sick or healthy, they can recover, etc.
Sports discourse Medical discourse Discourse of physics	SPORTS IS WAR MEDICINE IS WAR ELECTRONS ARE WAVES	Competing is fighting for territory, shooting and defending in football, etc. Diseases are enemies which have to be fought, defence is necessary, etc. hey have wavelengths, they oscillate, they have interferences.
Discourse of (molecular) biology	DNA IS A TEXT	DNA is a text, which contains information, which is read and transcribed.
expressions conventionally used in wine description. he main purpose of the present paper is to analyse the use of the anthropomorphic metaphor in English and Slovene wine tasting discourses. Adopting a contrastive perspective, the paper presents the results of a case study aimed at identifying similarities and variations in the realisation of the metaphor in a corpus of wine tasting notes. It will be argued that the conceptual frame WINE IS A HUMAN BEING is a pervasive recurrent schema both in Slovene and English wine tasting discourses. he results of the study suggest that despite some variations in distinctive aspects of the metaphor between the two languages, there is a large overlap in the way the taste of wine is conceptualised through the anthropomorphic theme.
Particular conceptual and linguistic metaphors have been identified as being characteristic of certain discourses. For example, the ubiquity of the conceptual metaphor ELECTIONS ARE A BATTLE has been identified as a distinguishing feature of political discourse (Bratož 2009) and the metaphor THE ECONOMY IS A PATIENT as frequent in economic discourse (Charteris-Black 2000). he pervasiveness of metaphors has been identified in several discourses which are essential to our lives, such as politics, economics, religion, emotions, time, and others. In this respect, metaphors are seen as an important aspect or distinguishing feature of particular discourses. Specialised scientific discourses, too, are often characterised by recurrent metaphorical patterns. For example, the metaphor MEDICINE IS WAR, which is pervasive in medical discourse, the metaphor ELECTRONS ARE WAVES introduced in the discourse of physics by the physicist Victor de Broglie, or the well-known metaphor DNA IS A TEXT identified in the discourse of molecular biology. Table 1 provides examples of conceptual metaphors characteristic of particular discourses and the mappings identified (Bratož 2011).
Table 1: Conceptual metaphors in different discourses
Wine tasting discourse is characterised by a number of distinctive recurrent schemas which are realised at the linguistic level by various conventionalised metaphorical expressions. According to Alousque (2011), some of the most common metaphorical frames are WINES ARE LIVING BEINGS (they have a body and a nose, they grow old, they are charming, honest, sophisticated, rich,
etc.), WINES ARE OBJECTS (they are long, short, round, sharp, etc.), and WINES ARE FOODS (they are greasy or creamy). In addition to these, the wine tasting discourse is characterised by two synaesthetic metaphors: the first is TASTING IS TOUCHING according to which a wine can be velvety or silky, for example, and the second is the conceptual metaphor TASTING IS HEARING, with wine descriptors such as harmonious or having notes.
hese metaphorically motivated expressions are used by experts in their wine tasting notes and reviews. Does this mean that we can consider them as legitimate members of the wine tasting terminology? Temmerman (2000, 157) points out that traditional schools of terminology considered metaphors and figurative language in general as undesirable linguistic devices. However, she believes that metaphor plays a crucial role in lexicalisation processes and proposes a new perspective in terminological studies which would try to account for the metaphorically motivated terms. With the frequency of applying a particular metaphorically used expression to wine, this might develop a conventional meaning as a wine descriptor and consequently enter the realm of metaphorically motivated terminology. In this context, Caballero and Suarez-Toste (2008, 242) argue that metaphors "not only reveal the way wine specialists conceptualise wine, but also work as an indispensable tool for communicating the complex sensory experience of tasting wine to others". On the other hand, Lehrer (2009, 77) warns that this does not mean that these terms will necessarily be applied systematically and consistently by wine experts since the taste of wine and the assessment associated with it are always partly subjective. Nevertheless, professionals point out that wine discourse often relies too much on subjective experience, promoting a hedonistic attitude towards the description of the taste of wine rather than a scientific approach. he main difference between wine drinking and wine tasting is that wine tasting should imply an objective and methodological approach to what we see, smell and taste. However, in her research on the perceptions of objective characteristics of wine in wine tasting, Lehrer (ibid.) concluded that even wine experts rarely understand wine descriptors in the same way, although they usually do better than novices when describing wines which they are thoroughly trained to evaluate. his suggests that wine tasting is to a certain extent inherently prone to subjective interpretation.
In his seminal work on wine tasting, Peynaud (1987, 163) makes a distinction between three different types of wine connoisseurs: the professional taster, the wine journalist who writes for the readers of a wine magazine, and the informed amateur. He argues that the expert's style of writing about wine is precise and economical, while the amateur's vocabulary is limited and full of metaphors and allusions. As Bruce (1999) points out, Peynaud denounces the use of metaphorical language and imagery as unscientific and imprecise but he does, in a sense unaccountably, make an exception for personification and the anthropomorphic metaphor, acknowledging that "in his comments a taster will attribute a shape and a texture to a wine, he will talk of its youth, its ageing, its defects and diseases, and he will bestow on it the rarest of human virtues: wine is honest, noble, loveable, generous, and so on" (Peynaud 1987, 180-1).
3. Characteristics of metaphors in wine tasting discourse
In the previous chapter we argued that discourses are characterised by particular conceptual metaphors and their realisations. However, it is not just the type of metaphor (i.e. the selection of source domains) which is characteristic of a certain discourse but also the way a particular metaphor operates within it. A closer look at the metaphors analysed reveals several aspects which are characteristic of the metaphors in wine tasting discourse.
he first such aspect can be found in the way mappings stretch out across several domains. For instance, how can we account for the fact that a wine can be described as supple, generous and beautifully focused or as fresh, plump and juicy, deep and concentrated all in one stroke. Several of these adjectives could be seen as pretty straightforward instantations from the conceptual domain of human being, for example generous and plump. On the other hand, fresh, deep or concentrated would normally evoke other domains, such as fruits, containers or liquids. Another aspect which contributes to the complexity of wine discourse is the fact that lexical items (mostly adjectives) from one source domain are used to describe both wine itself as well as some of its specific properties. So, for example, the adjective seductive can be used to describe a wine in general or one of its aspects (seductive currant and blackberry fruit). Here are some English and Slovene examples from the case study discussed below:
(1)	this is still a refined, delicious and Bordeaux-inspired Cabernet
(2)	the tannins that lead the way now are sleek and refined
(3)	bay leaf and peppery cream aromas and flavours on a refined frame
(4)	uglajena mineralnost
(5)	poskočna svežina
(6)	simpatičnapikantnost
(7)	nos ne pove veliko
(8)	beautiful nose
(9)	lep vonj
hese examples suggest that once a metaphor has settled into the wine tasting jargon, it often becomes neutralised and operates according to a different logic. his explains why we can portray a wine, tannins, a frame and minerality all with the descriptor refined (Slo. uglajen) as in the examples (1-4). he metaphors in examples 5 and 6, which could be translated into English as lively freshness and cute piquancy suggest that the source domain is not mapped onto the target entity WINE but rather extends to one of its properties. Example 7, nos ne pove veliko (Eng. the nose doesn't say much), evokes another complex mapping by drawing correspondences between the synaesthetic metaphor and the domain of oral communication, while in examples 8 and 9, the nose and smell are somewhat unconventionally referred to as beautiful (Slo. lep), given that the target domain is a perceived sensory experience.
Suarez-Toste (2007, 54) concedes that the different figurative schemas suggested by the lexical items are due to the existence of "asymmetrical mappings across domains" and that synaesthetically motivated metaphors — i.e. metaphors which are related to the senses of touch, sight, and sound - are also used in relation to specific parameters, such as body, alcohol, acidity, etc. Lehrer (2009, 22—32) notes the overlapping of various semantic fields and a variety of possible semantic links between them, some extremely loose, based on purely associative and connotative relations.
Another typical feature of metaphors in the wine tasting genre is reflected in the way the qualities evoked by the mappings are interpreted. Lehrer (2009, 76) argues that metaphorical descriptors are often based on source domain stereotypes, for example, a senile wine is too old and has lost its desirable qualities. On the other hand, the qualities evoked by the source domain entities may be subject to different interpretations. A case in point is the adjective honest as a wine descriptor, which can be interpreted as respectable or even honourable, suggesting a superior quality, but also as "one in which there is no attempt to mask its defects, for example, by adding sugar to hide the
excessive acidity" (ibid. 32), a sense which would contrast with pretentious. In addition, when mapped onto the domain of wine, source domain meanings are not always predictable or reliable. For example, the adjective polite, which is undeniably a positive descriptor for a human being, "is a term of low praise for wine, since a polite wine is pleasant but not exciting" (ibid. 37).
he third aspect which distinguishes metaphors in winespeak is that the meanings of descriptors mapped from the source domain can be changed or neutralised in the target text. Goatly (1997, 24) suggests that dictionary meanings of words used in a text can change, activating, for example, unconventional semantic relations between lexical items, such as hyponymy, synonymy and others. An illustrative example of this process is again provided by Lehrer (2009, 76), who argues that while the adjectives heavy, muscular, brawny, stout, and big-boned are synonyms in the wine discourse, they are not synonymous when applied to the human body. A different instance of a change of meaning in text is a shift in connotation, as with the adjectives fat and stout, which are negative in the description of the human body, but positive for the body of wine (ibid. 77).
Yet another characteristic of the metaphorically—motivated descriptors in the wine discourse is that they can be used as descriptive or evaluative terms. Descriptive terms have concrete physical correlates; they relate to particular properties of the wine which experts have learnt to discriminate. By contrast, evaluative metaphors are expressive in nature, suggesting a positive or negative attitude towards the wine. While purely evaluative terms, such as excellent or terrible, are highly subjective, there are many which have become conventionalised and have acquired an almost technical status, such as subtle or assertive (Lehrer 2009, 14).1 In the metaphor WINE IS A HUMAN BEING, terms which draw on the domains of body and age are mostly descriptive, while those which come from the domain of human personality and behaviour are largely evaluative, although several of these terms have entered the conventional wine vocabulary (e.g. straightforward or aggressive) . On the other hand, a great deal of lexis from the wine discourse has both a descriptive and an evaluative component. Some metaphorically—motivated terms, like young, for example, are generally neutral but may take on evaluative force in certain contexts (ibid. 74).
As a final point, the multifaceted nature of the metaphorical mappings in the wine discourse is well illustrated by Suarez—Toste (2007, 56) in his discussion of personification:
It is nonetheless extremely odd that concrete physical properties should demand the use of others sometimes not even equally concrete. A case in point is the recurrence of (to a great extent more abstract) personification: most newcomers experience trouble understanding the meaning of such terms as masculine/feminine, shy, intellectual, diffident, sexy, demure, extroverted, restrained, etc., because they are complex terms when applied to (complex) human beings and therefore what gets mapped and what not is not always clear.
4. Case study
his case study is aimed at exploring and comparing the realisation of the anthropomorphic metaphor in the Slovene and English wine tasting discourses in order to establish the similarities and variations in the way wine is conceptualised in the two languages and cultures. Tasting notes are evaluative texts aimed at the promotion of wine for a general audience. Following Caballero
1 Lehrer (2009, 14-5) divides evaluative terms into those of high praise, low praise, mild derogation, and strong derogation.
(2009, 75) the main reason for choosing the genre of the tasting note is in the fact that "the tasting note is one of the most representative and popular genres in wine discourse, as well as a key instrument in the process of acculturation" and that "metaphors underlying the wine discourse cut across languages and cultures as well as across national and regional differences," which is also clear from the practice of wine tasting magazines and other publications which usually cover a wide range of wine regions and wine varieties. While tasting notes are essentially evaluative in nature, they still contain many conventionalised descriptive terms which are to a large extent shared by experts. However, since new words are added all the time, it would be impossible to draw up an exhaustive list of descriptors. he references to conventionalised wine metaphors related to descriptive and evaluative terms discussed in the case study are based on the lists of wine words and expressions in Lehrer (2009, 5—41) and the list of wine descriptors in Medved (1997, 210—11).
4.1 Methodology and sources
Having recognised the ubiquity of the anthropomorphic metaphor in wine discourse, several authors (Suarez-Toste 2007; Lehrer 2009; Caballero 2009; Caballero and Suarez-Toste 2010) have stressed that the basic metaphorical schema WINE IS A HUMAN BEING can be broken down into different lower-level, specific schemas bringing to the fore various aspects of the concept HUMAN BEING, namely age, personality and body. Besides these three features, the analysis of our data revealed two more specific aspects of the basic metaphor which I labelled general appearance and economic condition. At the processing level, the data analysis consisted in identifying linguistic realisations of five different aspects (or specific-level schemas) of the anthropomorphic metaphor in Slovene and English tasting notes.
For this purpose, a corpus of 80 Slovene and 80 English notes (160 in total) has been built, from 12 to 89 words in length. he English notes have been taken from two of the most authoritative wine magazines published in English: Decanter and Wine Spectator, while the Slovene corpus consists of notes from the publication Vinski vodič: Slovenija 2012 and the section of the daily newspaper Finance dedicated to wine reviews called Weekend Vinoteka. he texts for analysis have been selected at random in an attempt to account for several wine varieties and wine-producing regions. Aside from Vinski vodič: Slovenija 2012, which was not available in electronic form, the data were sourced from the online versions of the publications, with the Wine Spectator available by subscription. Since the research is focused on identifying the productivity of the basic metaphorical schema WINE IS A HUMAN BEING - i.e. the different realisations of the metaphorical concept at the linguistic level, rather than the frequency of key items - the analysis is for the most part qualitative in nature.
4.2 Results 4.2.1 Age
Several conventional metaphors have been identified in the two corpora which foreground the age aspect of wine:
English corpus: young, mature, youthful
Slovene corpus: staran, star, zrel, zelo mlad, prezrel, njegova mladost
In addition, the analysis revealed several less conventional extensions of the metaphor, particularly
in the Slovene corpus:
(1)	still a baby
(2)	je šele na začetku svoje poti
(3)	je vino še precej 'divje', vendar se bo kmalu umirilo
(4)	vsekakor pa bo v polni formi čez nekaj let
(5)	je vse zrelostne faze že preživel
(6)	vaniljo od šolanja v sodih je še čutiti
4.2.2	Physical body
he majority of expressions related to the body of a wine found in the two corpora are conventional descriptive expressions which reflect specific physical correlates:
English corpus: full—bodied, big, big—bodied, powerful, well—structured, shows power, well—defined, chunky, heavy, firm, plump, well-framed, weighty, enough weight to say it's serious.
Slovene corpus: močan, velik, lahek, okrogel, krepko telo, močno telo, šibko telo, nima telesa, lažjega telesa, polnega telesa, lahkotno kot peresce, v dobri formi.
4.2.3	Personality/behaviour
A number of conventionally used descriptor expressions have been found in both languages, but this aspect of the metaphor was more productive in Slovene:
English corpus: seductive, refined, sophisticated, with character, luscious, authoritative, persistent, lovable, gracious, generous, modest, bold, forward, austere, lovely, vibrant, closed, enticing, charming, lively, with finesse, has personality.
Slovene corpus: nežen, poskočen, živahen, všečen, divji, enoplasten, uglajen, nezahteven, plemenit, zaprt, zapeljiv, mogočno, lahkotno, šarmanten, zadržan, umirjen, skromnejši, precizen, pretanjen, resen, simpatičen, karakteren, prijeten, diskreten, ima čvrst karakter, ima fineso, kaže prefinjenost, preseže pričakovanja.
he Slovene corpus contains several verbal constructions which can be related to the domain of personality: zadovolji, vztraja, vas utegne navdušiti, razvaja, razveseli.
In addition, a number of creative extensions of the metaphor were identified:
(1)	a crowd-pleaser
(2)	the intruder, lone Sauvignon
(3)	shows a sense of wilderness
(4)	kot dober ljubimec
(5)	se ne razkrije
(6)	potrebuje čas, da se odpre
(7)	se pokaže v povsem drugačni podobi
(8)	hedonizemprve vrste
4.2.4	General appearance
he data analysis revealed another set of descriptors labelled here under general appearance which did not fit into the above categories but was clearly related to the anthropomorphic schema.
English corpus: amazing, gorgeous, glorious, elegant, polished, sleek, attractive, stylish, appealing, classic, beautiful, classy.
Slovene corpus: eleganten, lep, bled, razkošen, (vrhunska eleganca).
4.2.5	Economic condition
he analysis revealed a high frequency of the adjectival descriptor rich in the English corpus (28 occurrences) and the Slovene equivalent bogat (26 occurrences) in the Slovene corpus.
English corpus: rich (richness), super-rich, opulent (opulence), ultra-rich, high-class. Slovene corpus:
4.3 Discussion
he results of the analysis of Slovene and English wine tasting notes clearly suggest that the conceptualisation of wine as a human being is a recurrent metaphorical schema in both languages. Examples of linguistic realisations have been identified for all five aspects of the metaphor - i.e. age, body, personality/behaviour, general appearance and economic condition - which suggests a high degree of universality of the metaphor. On the other hand, the results revealed some differences in the productivity and scope of the metaphor.
he dimension of wine which relates to its age is based on an assessment of taste and feel, in particular the properties of acidity and astringency. he metaphorical mappings reflect the human life-cycle, with several conventional terms, such as young, old, and mature, but also a number of creative extensions of the metaphorical schema, such as decrepit, senile, or even dying. he great productivity of this specific-level realisation of the basic metaphor in which the age of the wine is mapped onto a person's age is illustrated by Caballero and Suarez-Toste (2008, 246), who concede that "the different stages in the development of a wine are commonly referred to by means of terms like baby, young, well-aged, venerable or dead (so much so that the drinking of a wine in a premature stage of development is often condemned as infanticide)". As we can see from the results in 4.2.1, this aspect of the anthropomorphic metaphor also revealed several extensions in which wine is conceptualised in analogy to different stages of a person's life, from being a baby and na začetku svoje poti (Eng. at the beginning of its journey) in examples 1 and 2, teenage years and adolescence in example 3 (Eng. the wine is still a little 'wild' but it will soon calm down) and 4 (Eng. it will be in its full form in a few years) to maturity in 5 (Eng. has already gone through all its maturity stages). In 6 (Eng. the vanilla from its schooling days is still to be felt) wine is conceptualised as a former student or pupil who went through his/her schooling in a barrel. hrough the source domain HUMAN BEING, some of these metaphors are also related to other schemas; the reference to a journey in 2, for example, clearly evokes the conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY.
he body of a wine usually refers to the combination of alcohol, acids and tannins as they are perceived in the mouth. However, Lehrer (2009, 11) points out that the actual term body is a complex concept since some terms (e.g. heavy) can be either positive or negative, depending on
the wine. In addition, the metaphorically motivated terms related to the concept body2 extend to domains other than that of human being; a wine's body can be described as deep, for example, suggesting the container schema. Most expressions identified in the corpus which draw on the domain of body (jull—bodied, plump, heavy, big, big—bodied, powerful, and others) are recorded by Lehrer (2009) and Medved (1997) as conventionalised descriptors. he only expression found related to body which has an evaluative force is the Slovene expression v dobri jormi (Eng. in a good condition) which reflects an undefined positive quality.
he domains of personality and behaviour contribute a wealth of expressions to the wine lexis. his is a particularly productive aspect of the metaphor which has generated a number of metaphorically motivated descriptors. heir nature is mostly evaluative, which is not surprising given that they are related to the aspect of the human being which is the most elusive and indefinable of its own accord. In addition, since there is no obvious correlation between many words related to personality and behaviour and any physical quality of the wine, several interpretations are possible. A case in point is the adjective honest discussed in 3. A number of conventionally used descriptors have been found in both languages, but this aspect of the metaphor was more productive in Slovene. In addition, the Slovene corpus revealed several verbal constructions in which a particular wine is perceived as a person who can satisfy (Slo. zadovoljiti), cheer up (Slo. razveseliti se) or pamper (Slo. i) another person.
Aside from conventional expressions, the presence of personality and behaviour terms in the wine vocabulary provides the possibility for new terms to be transferred or mapped onto the domain, such as the expressions authoritative and gracious from the English corpus, which may, if used frequently, eventually acquire the status of terms. In this context, Lehrer (2009, 33—41) discusses a number of personality related expressions which have recently entered the wine jargon, and which, for example, portray wine as easygoing, approachable, generous, shy, sly, intelligent, but also as having pizzazz. In addition, as we can see from the examples in 4.4.3, the nature of the source domain allows for a number of creative extensions of the metaphor, with wine being conceptualised in terms of different personality aspects, such as a crowd—pleaser or an intruder. he Slovene corpus was more productive in this aspect, portraying wine as a good lover (Slo. dober ljubimec), a wine which doesn't reveal itselj(Slo. se ne razkrije), needs time to open itseljup (Slo. potrebuje čas, da se odpre), comes out with a completely different image (Slo. se pokaže v povsem drugačni podobi) or shows first-class hedonism (Slo. hedonizemprve vrste).
Similarly to the other aspects of the anthropomorphic metaphor, here there is an overlap with some other domains; expressions from the domain of body can be used to talk about personality; i.e. a solid, strong, weak personality. As a wine descriptor, the expression character is itself a complex term which may apply both to the quality or complexity of a wine and can be both descriptive and evaluative.
he set of descriptors which were classified under the label general appearance are mainly evaluative in nature. More examples were identified in the English corpus suggesting a higher productivity of this aspect of the metaphor in English. Since they are largely evaluative, the expressions found are 2 A wine can even be described as having legs, which is a technical term indicating the alcohol content in the wine is perceived as trickles inside the glass when the wine glass is rolled. he nose dimension, which is itself analogous to the anthropomorphic schema, is also related to the domain of the physical body. However, the different metaphorically motivated expressions found in this context are mapped onto other conceptual domains (such as the domain of plants) which are not the focus of this paper.
all subject to individual interpretation of the desirable or undesirable qualities in a particular wine. However, this aspect of the metaphor should not be confused with the dimension of a wine which is referred to as appearance and refers to the actual visual aspect of wine, including, for example, various shades of colour.
he last aspect of the anthropomorphic metaphor analysed, economic condition, was also identified in both languages. he most common expression found was the adjectival descriptor rich in the English corpus (28 occurrences) and the Slovene equivalent bogat (26 occurrences) in the Slovene corpus. I would argue that compared to the Slovene corpus, in which only the expression bogat was identified, the higher productivity of the metaphor in the English corpus may be interpreted from a cross-cultural perspective. he English terms rich, super-rich and ultra-rich clearly indicate a grading of personal wealth, interpreted against the social and cultural context to which they refer (a tentative definition would be millionaires for the super-rich and billionaires for the ultra-rich). In the Slovene corpus, the grading of wealth was sometimes expressed by the expression izjemno bogat (Eng. extremely rich), but in most cases this wine dimension was described in other terms. One possible interpretation of this can be found in the actual absence of such grading of personal wealth in the Slovene social and cultural environment in which billionaires or the ultra-rich are arguably not a category.
One of the major benefits of working with metaphors contrastively is that we are able to see whether a particular metaphor is unique to or more common in one language or whether it is shared by more or all languages and is therefore universal. In this way we can analyse metaphors as products of a particular cultural environment. In addition, setting data from one language against that of another allows us to make inferences about the languages involved in analysis. By contrasting metaphors in the English and Slovene wine tasting notes, for example, we are able to see whether a particular metaphor is more productive in one of the two languages. he data analysed did show aspects of variation in the productivity of the anthropomorphic metaphor in English and Slovene. However, it also revealed a high degree of universality of the metaphor between the two languages, suggesting the existence of a well-established metaphorically motivated terminology shared by both languages.
5. Conclusion
he language of wine, or winespeak, is considered by some as highly sophisticated rhetoric and by others as smug vinobabble. To the non-connoisseur, wine drinking is above all an aesthetic experience which calls for creative and inspired uses of language. At the other extreme, the idiom used by the wine-expert community (oenologists and professional wine tasters) reflects a large repertoire of technical lexis which should rely on criteria and standards whose aim is to be as objective and measurable as possible. While in most cases, the expert and the layperson difler substantially in their linguistic rendering of the wine tasting experience, there is one aspect of language which is common to both - the ubiquitous use of metaphors. However, unlike the uninitiated rhetoric of the lay population, which often includes novel metaphorical extensions, a large proportion of the metaphorical language used by wine experts is conventionalised expressions which have developed into metaphorically motivated wine terminology and jargon.
As we have seen, one of the most salient schemas in wine tasting notes is the anthropomorphic metaphor. he metaphorically-motivated terms analysed reflect several special characteristics of the use of metaphor in the wine discourse, such as the fact that many wine dimensions are correlated and interrelated, allowing for asymmetrical mappings to be drawn, or the neutralisation
of meanings in the target text, which make the study of metaphor in this particular area all the more complex and intriguing.
he analysis of the metaphor WINE IS A HUMAN BEING in the corpus of English and Slovene wine tasting notes explored five different aspects of the source domain, age, physical body, personality/behaviour, general appearance and economic condition. he results revealed that all these aspects of the metaphor were realised in both languages, with some aspects being more productive in Slovene, others in English. While a larger corpus must be examined in order to understand the full extent of the variation in the use of metaphor in the English and Slovene wine discourse, we may conclude that there is a great deal of overlap in the way the two languages conceptualise the taste of wine through the anthropomorphic metaphor. It is also clear that there is a well—developed metaphorically motivated wine terminology used on the international level which cuts across languages and cultures. Finally, it must be stressed that the wine lexis is an open set, new metaphorically motivated descriptors are created every day, extending the basic metaphors to other, often unpredictable, domains.
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Sources used for analysis
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