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Food and terminology: Expressing sensory experience in several languages
Edited by Rita Temmerman and Danièle Dubois
[Terminology 23:1] 2017
► pp. 132–154

Verbalizing sensory experience for marketing success

The case of the wine descriptor minerality and the product name smoothie

| Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) |
Descriptors of sensory experience are known to be crucial in trying to objectify the world. New descriptors are coined to express the enhanced experience of a reality experienced by human beings. In this article we illustrate the cognitive and cross-cultural framing for verbalizing sensory experience discussing the indeterminacy and vagueness of the wine descriptor minerality and the successful universal neologism smoothie, a product name for a new product. Both case studies concern units of understanding that are difficult to define but that are related to products with high marketing potential. First we refer to the expert literature in food studies dealing with minerality and smoothies. Then we report on observations based on discourse oriented empirical heuristics and surveying. Finally we discuss in how far experiencing food and drinks is culture-bound and language-specific, which implies that translating food descriptions may be a daunting task.
Keywords: innovation and language, marketing and terminology, minerality in wine, neologisms, sensory descriptors, smoothie, socio-cognitive terminology, translation of descriptors
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sensory experience and language
  • 3.Embodied sensory terminology
  • 4.Studying a descriptor: Minerality in white wines
  • 5.Creating and naming: Smoothie
  • 6.Sensory descriptors and product naming in several languages and different cultures
  • 7.Descriptors and neologisms in marketing
  • 8.Relevance of terminological analysis for culture bound marketing
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/term.23.1.06tem
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