Unpacking the language of taste — A study of gustatory descriptions in Swedish laypeople and trained experts.
Författare
Summary, in English
Eating and drinking evoke complex sensory experiences and articulating them through language is often challenging. Differences between laypeople and sensory experts may offer valuable insights into how gustatory experiences are communicated. This is important because describing flavor in clear and shared terms is essential when experts and non-experts need to understand each other,
whether in food development, education, or research. This study examines how expertise shapes flavor descriptions, focusing on linguistic codability. By analyzing elicited descriptions of gustatory stimuli from Swedish laypeople and sensory experts, differences in lexical precision, agreement, and differentiation in gustatory language are investigated. The results show that experts exhibit greater lexical precision and a broader vocabulary. However, both groups show comparable agreement in basic taste identification with no significant differences in response time. The findings indicate that even though experts exhibit a broader and more precise vocabulary, similarities
between the groups and variation within both groups might suggest that linguistic encoding of flavor is influenced not only by expertise, but also by individual factors. These findings deepen our understanding of how language represents sensory experience and how differences in expertise impact the way we talk about flavor.
whether in food development, education, or research. This study examines how expertise shapes flavor descriptions, focusing on linguistic codability. By analyzing elicited descriptions of gustatory stimuli from Swedish laypeople and sensory experts, differences in lexical precision, agreement, and differentiation in gustatory language are investigated. The results show that experts exhibit greater lexical precision and a broader vocabulary. However, both groups show comparable agreement in basic taste identification with no significant differences in response time. The findings indicate that even though experts exhibit a broader and more precise vocabulary, similarities
between the groups and variation within both groups might suggest that linguistic encoding of flavor is influenced not only by expertise, but also by individual factors. These findings deepen our understanding of how language represents sensory experience and how differences in expertise impact the way we talk about flavor.
Publiceringsår
2025
Språk
Engelska
Fulltext
Dokumenttyp
Examensarbete för kandidatexamen
Ämne
- Languages and Literatures
Nyckelord
- linguistics
- sensory linguistics
- gustatory language
- taste descriptions
- flavor descriptions
- sensory evaluation
- sensory marketing
- experts
- laypeople
- language production
- Swedish
Handledare
- Johan Blomberg
- Sandra Debreslioska