GUSTATORY, OLFACTORY, TACTILE MODALITIES IN CONNOISSEURIAL FOOD REVIEWS

Abstract

Sensorial experience has always been of paramount importance for humans, their survival, and world cognition. The rise of Sensory/ Sensorial/ Sensitive Linguistics in the 21st century, interest in multimodality, and digital technologies advance triggered computerized research of gustatory, olfactory, and tactile perception as well as diverse experiments in Psycholinguistics, Neurolinguistics, Cognitive Linguistics. 500 connoisseurial food reviews written by prominent restaurant critics in Great Britain and the United States of America in 2020-2023 were analyzed to find out textual ways of communicating taste. The article analyzes language means used to package taste perception, focusing on gustatory, olfactory, and tactile modalities in Modern English, the intersection of gustation and olfaction, in particular, sensory lexemes across categories. Word frequency and combinability of basic taste terms, gustatory words, and non-taste-related words were analyzed to describe taste types and flavour degrees. Food reviews reveal the dominance of veridical tastes, not generic taste types. Tactile modality is expressed in food reviews in multiple ways, proving that the meal’s texture and some ingredients are one of the essential parameters of the meal evaluation. Visual modality is realized through numerous photos of the dishes and restaurants accompanying reviews. Auditory modality in food reviews is reduced to a couple of adjectives and their derivatives. The research is done within Culinary Linguistics deals with diverse genres of food writing, Sensitive Linguistics that focuses on perceptual modalities, Multimodality Theory as eating and food tasting are viewed as multisensory experience and Cognitive Linguistics, in particular, categorization of sensual perceptions.