Communication by language and nourishment by food are among the few things that indispensably shape our daily life. These two critical elements of human life may not appear to hold reciprocal relationships, but language indeed plays a vital role in our food culture in ways that are not always obvious. In rich and creative descriptions of our food experiences, for instance, how, where, and by whom taste expressions are used can reflect upon issues of linguistic analysis. This chapter overviews the ways in which investigations of the language of food, when viewed through a linguistic lens, can make a significant contribution towards a better understanding of Japanese language, culture, and society.
This chapter explores how Japanese mimetics are used to verbally express the texture of rice crackers in real and imagined cases. Two experiments were conducted to test whether the use of mimetics varies when eating rice crackers as opposed to merely imagining eating rice crackers. The analysis of the mimetics used to express the physically perceived texture and the imagined texture of the rice crackers shows that these two situations may have different prototypes of rice crackers. This study suggests that the degree of iconicity of the same mimetics can vary according to the contexts in which they are used.
This study explores the sound-symbolic effects of Japanese consonants on image of food textures. Our experiment tested whether voiced vs. voiceless plosives, at various places of articulation, could affect participants’ image of the hardness of a snack. The results revealed that both voicing and place of articulation had effects and that voicing had a stronger effect. Our results support the explanation of sound symbolism based on embodied motivation, as discussed in Cognitive Linguistics. Regarding the voicing of obstruents, the acoustic account cannot explain our results, while the articulatory and the lexical accounts are compatible with them. Regarding the place of articulation, all three accounts can explain our results. These findings can provide insights for food product marketing and related fields.
Over the past two decades, the casual register of Japanese has developed a new class of binomial adjectives, such as fuwa-toro ‘fluffy and creamy’ and gū-kawa ‘overwhelmingly cute’. These terms are particularly common in creative, nuanced descriptions of food, fashion, and personality. This paper identifies four general constraints on the element ordering of these binomial adjectives that apply to different parts of the morphological network. Similar to mimetic (ideophonic) words, these adjectives are immediate to specific situations or sensory experiences and help us to express subjective, multimodal impressions that are otherwise inexpressible.
The chapter explains how kuu and taberu, two major verbs of eating in Japanese, emerged, developed, and changed their literal and figurative meanings. Both verbs began their life distinctly. Kuu emerged from the active zone, while societal structures gave rise to taberu. This difference is reflected in two facets of culture, labeled Culture 1 and Culture 2, which embrace adversity and hierarchical society, respectively, revealing two social attributes that are historically prevalent in Japan. Today’s usages of taberu and kuu show a shift in the selection of active zones and a shift from metonymy to metaphor. Drawing upon kuu’s current tendency to withdraw from figurative expression, the chapter suggests that metonymy and metaphor can effect a clear division of labor.
This chapter examines where the Japanese loanword sushi stands in its naturalization process into English. Application of Doi’s (2014) scale to usage of sushi in the Oxford English Dictionary shows it is midway through naturalization. The chapter questions the finding, pointing out the problems of Doi’s scale, including its unmotivated ordering of criteria (e.g., precedence of “compounding” over “semantic change”). To assess the degree of naturalization, the chapter suggests considering the degree of entrenchment, which is reflected in (i) token frequency, (ii) use of the loanword in constructions, including snowclones (e.g., Sushi is the new pizza), and (iii) the word’s ability to expand the nomenclatural network. Examination of these points suggests sushi has already moved into the naturalized stage.
Taste terms such as soft for wine often have a special meaning that differs from their general definition. This chapter proposes a way to define terms of Japanese sake taste by employing (1) a usage-based approach, (2) “encyclopedic semantics” rather than a “dictionary view,” and (3) sense-making theory (Fukaya & Tanaka, 1996; Tanaka & Fukaya, 1998), drawing on data from a “sake tasting description corpus.” Sixteen high-frequency adjectivals (e.g., yawarakai ‘soft’) are selected and their sense(s) defined in a bottom-up and abductive fashion based on scores indicating the strength of co-occurrence between terms. The suggestion is that the target terms can have a sense related to taste, flavor, texture, time flow, etc. not normally provided by an ordinary dictionary.
This chapter offers a frame-semantic account of the meanings of Japanese taste terms, analyzing 5,620 instances of collocations, consisting of an adjectival taste term and a noun, such as shibui kao ‘lit. astringent face’. It first defines the literal sense of the taste terms, identifying what frame is evoked by not only using but also adjusting the definitions and set of arguments from FrameNet (an English resource) to fit the case of Japanese. It then considers the sense extensions. The findings include the following: both the literal and the extended senses can imply (un)desirability; the semantic change can be accounted for by identifying frames of both literal and figurative uses that prop up the lexical meanings.
This chapter identifies verbs of seasoning from the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese and divides them into two types: those taking the seasoning as direct object (e.g., shio o furikakeru ‘sprinkle salt’) and those marking the seasoning with the instrumental case (e.g., shio de ajituke suru ‘season (something) with salt’). While some verbs of seasoning in English participate in the locative alternation (e.g., Sprinkle salt over the meat vs. Sprinkle the meat with salt), Japanese has considerably fewer alternating verbs, requiring the use of different verbs in the realm of seasoning. The difference is accounted for in light of “fashions of speaking” (e.g., Ikegami, 1985).
This chapter analyzes motion expressions for wine aromas and flavors found in a corpus of wine-tasting notes, applying a typological theory of motion expressions (Talmy, 2000). Japanese wine-tasting descriptions are typically metaphoric, attempting to convey the motion of an entity, particularly aroma and flavor, around the sensory organs, similar to the case of English (Caballero, 2007). However, the following distinct features are observed in the Japanese wine-tasting context: (i) path-of-motion verbs are more predominantly used than manner-of-motion verbs to describe wine; (ii) a combination of a deictic verb and another verb (e.g., de-te-kuru [exit-conj-come] ‘come out’) is more frequently used than a single deictic verb. These characteristics mirror the patterns observed in Japanese descriptions of motion events in space.
This chapter analyzes taste descriptions, applying force dynamics (Talmy, 1988), which uses a schematic structure to characterize force relations. I extracted 90 descriptions from online food columns to examine causal interactions in which Food acts upon Taster or on another Food, to find that they can be classified into four basic force relations. The influenced entity can: undergo a change (caused); overcome a blockage (overcoming); be prevented from changing (blocked); or remain unchanged despite a force acting against it/her (persevering). The classification reveals that the caused pattern is predominant, indicating that Food or Taster tends to be conceptualized as a malleable entity that “gives in” to (another) Food.
Communication by language and nourishment by food are among the few things that indispensably shape our daily life. These two critical elements of human life may not appear to hold reciprocal relationships, but language indeed plays a vital role in our food culture in ways that are not always obvious. In rich and creative descriptions of our food experiences, for instance, how, where, and by whom taste expressions are used can reflect upon issues of linguistic analysis. This chapter overviews the ways in which investigations of the language of food, when viewed through a linguistic lens, can make a significant contribution towards a better understanding of Japanese language, culture, and society.
This chapter explores how Japanese mimetics are used to verbally express the texture of rice crackers in real and imagined cases. Two experiments were conducted to test whether the use of mimetics varies when eating rice crackers as opposed to merely imagining eating rice crackers. The analysis of the mimetics used to express the physically perceived texture and the imagined texture of the rice crackers shows that these two situations may have different prototypes of rice crackers. This study suggests that the degree of iconicity of the same mimetics can vary according to the contexts in which they are used.
This study explores the sound-symbolic effects of Japanese consonants on image of food textures. Our experiment tested whether voiced vs. voiceless plosives, at various places of articulation, could affect participants’ image of the hardness of a snack. The results revealed that both voicing and place of articulation had effects and that voicing had a stronger effect. Our results support the explanation of sound symbolism based on embodied motivation, as discussed in Cognitive Linguistics. Regarding the voicing of obstruents, the acoustic account cannot explain our results, while the articulatory and the lexical accounts are compatible with them. Regarding the place of articulation, all three accounts can explain our results. These findings can provide insights for food product marketing and related fields.
Over the past two decades, the casual register of Japanese has developed a new class of binomial adjectives, such as fuwa-toro ‘fluffy and creamy’ and gū-kawa ‘overwhelmingly cute’. These terms are particularly common in creative, nuanced descriptions of food, fashion, and personality. This paper identifies four general constraints on the element ordering of these binomial adjectives that apply to different parts of the morphological network. Similar to mimetic (ideophonic) words, these adjectives are immediate to specific situations or sensory experiences and help us to express subjective, multimodal impressions that are otherwise inexpressible.
The chapter explains how kuu and taberu, two major verbs of eating in Japanese, emerged, developed, and changed their literal and figurative meanings. Both verbs began their life distinctly. Kuu emerged from the active zone, while societal structures gave rise to taberu. This difference is reflected in two facets of culture, labeled Culture 1 and Culture 2, which embrace adversity and hierarchical society, respectively, revealing two social attributes that are historically prevalent in Japan. Today’s usages of taberu and kuu show a shift in the selection of active zones and a shift from metonymy to metaphor. Drawing upon kuu’s current tendency to withdraw from figurative expression, the chapter suggests that metonymy and metaphor can effect a clear division of labor.
This chapter examines where the Japanese loanword sushi stands in its naturalization process into English. Application of Doi’s (2014) scale to usage of sushi in the Oxford English Dictionary shows it is midway through naturalization. The chapter questions the finding, pointing out the problems of Doi’s scale, including its unmotivated ordering of criteria (e.g., precedence of “compounding” over “semantic change”). To assess the degree of naturalization, the chapter suggests considering the degree of entrenchment, which is reflected in (i) token frequency, (ii) use of the loanword in constructions, including snowclones (e.g., Sushi is the new pizza), and (iii) the word’s ability to expand the nomenclatural network. Examination of these points suggests sushi has already moved into the naturalized stage.
Taste terms such as soft for wine often have a special meaning that differs from their general definition. This chapter proposes a way to define terms of Japanese sake taste by employing (1) a usage-based approach, (2) “encyclopedic semantics” rather than a “dictionary view,” and (3) sense-making theory (Fukaya & Tanaka, 1996; Tanaka & Fukaya, 1998), drawing on data from a “sake tasting description corpus.” Sixteen high-frequency adjectivals (e.g., yawarakai ‘soft’) are selected and their sense(s) defined in a bottom-up and abductive fashion based on scores indicating the strength of co-occurrence between terms. The suggestion is that the target terms can have a sense related to taste, flavor, texture, time flow, etc. not normally provided by an ordinary dictionary.
This chapter offers a frame-semantic account of the meanings of Japanese taste terms, analyzing 5,620 instances of collocations, consisting of an adjectival taste term and a noun, such as shibui kao ‘lit. astringent face’. It first defines the literal sense of the taste terms, identifying what frame is evoked by not only using but also adjusting the definitions and set of arguments from FrameNet (an English resource) to fit the case of Japanese. It then considers the sense extensions. The findings include the following: both the literal and the extended senses can imply (un)desirability; the semantic change can be accounted for by identifying frames of both literal and figurative uses that prop up the lexical meanings.
This chapter identifies verbs of seasoning from the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese and divides them into two types: those taking the seasoning as direct object (e.g., shio o furikakeru ‘sprinkle salt’) and those marking the seasoning with the instrumental case (e.g., shio de ajituke suru ‘season (something) with salt’). While some verbs of seasoning in English participate in the locative alternation (e.g., Sprinkle salt over the meat vs. Sprinkle the meat with salt), Japanese has considerably fewer alternating verbs, requiring the use of different verbs in the realm of seasoning. The difference is accounted for in light of “fashions of speaking” (e.g., Ikegami, 1985).
This chapter analyzes motion expressions for wine aromas and flavors found in a corpus of wine-tasting notes, applying a typological theory of motion expressions (Talmy, 2000). Japanese wine-tasting descriptions are typically metaphoric, attempting to convey the motion of an entity, particularly aroma and flavor, around the sensory organs, similar to the case of English (Caballero, 2007). However, the following distinct features are observed in the Japanese wine-tasting context: (i) path-of-motion verbs are more predominantly used than manner-of-motion verbs to describe wine; (ii) a combination of a deictic verb and another verb (e.g., de-te-kuru [exit-conj-come] ‘come out’) is more frequently used than a single deictic verb. These characteristics mirror the patterns observed in Japanese descriptions of motion events in space.
This chapter analyzes taste descriptions, applying force dynamics (Talmy, 1988), which uses a schematic structure to characterize force relations. I extracted 90 descriptions from online food columns to examine causal interactions in which Food acts upon Taster or on another Food, to find that they can be classified into four basic force relations. The influenced entity can: undergo a change (caused); overcome a blockage (overcoming); be prevented from changing (blocked); or remain unchanged despite a force acting against it/her (persevering). The classification reveals that the caused pattern is predominant, indicating that Food or Taster tends to be conceptualized as a malleable entity that “gives in” to (another) Food.