Metaphor as a means of describing flavor in the contemporary Englishspeaking culture

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of metaphors used to describe flavor in the 21st century Englishspeaking culture. The analysis is based on the modern theories of taste developed within the Humanities and the most relevant ideas of Metaphor Studies. Among the latter is J. Zinken’s Discourse Metaphor Theory. According to it, metaphor can serve as a framing device, setting conceptual landmarks for oral and written narratives. The research was conducted on the basis of the culinary show MasterChef. The author made a sample of five hundred metaphors, which is representative enough to achieve the main objective of the research: to reveal the patterns of metaphorical activity in conceptualizing flavor and model the metaphoric landscape of flavor. The research shows that the metaphoric landscape of flavor is constructed around several discourse metaphors: flavor is an event, flavor is a dimensional object, flavor is balance, flavor is a living being, flavor is a form of art. Each discourse metaphor can be used as it is, represented in speech by the most typical verbal means. It can also be represented by its subordinate forms. For instance, the subordinate forms for the event metaphor are flavor is motion, flavor is an impact, flavor is an explosion, and others. Genetically different metaphors may be combined within one description conveying different aspects of flavor. Metaphor expands the repertoire of means used for communicating flavor experience and is a full-fledged means of its cognition and verbalization, alongside qualia terms.