Figurative Language and Sensory Perception: Corpus-Based Computer-Assisted Study of the Nature and Motivation of Synesthetic Metaphors in Olive Oil Tasting Notes

Abstract

ABSTRACT Meaning in sensory language is often built through figurative mechanisms, such as synesthetic metaphors, where a sensorial domain is used to talk about perceptions from a different sense, as in sweet [ taste ] texture [ touch ]. The motivation of synesthetic transfers of meaning has been studied in general and literary language, resulting in attempts to reveal universal patterns regarding the directionality of meaning transfer and sensorial conceptual preference. However, those universals have not been proven in any sensory Language for Specific Purposes (LSP). We a sensory LSP corpus of olive oil tasing notes in English to explore the nature of these metaphors, test existent models and explanatory accounts and identify tendencies present in synesthetic meaning transfers. The computer-assisted semi-automatic scalable methodology followed consists of the innovative quasi-simultaneous identification of semantic incongruences and the classification of synesthetic expressions in the discourse according to the source and target sensorial domains. Results show the inadequacy of existent models to explain synesthetic behavior in olive oil tasting language. The patterns found are discussed in the light of cognitive constraints and LSP genre analysis to conclude that a multi-causal approach is needed to explain the motivation of synesthetic transfers of meaning.