Motivation and Background Information

In the present section, we introduce the motivations behind studying crossmodality in flavor expressions and explain the choice of collecting Taiwan Mandarin-language data from coffee cupping practices occurring in Taiwan.

1.2.1 Why Crossmodal Expressions of Flavor?

A crossmodal expression entails an intersection of human senses in language (Marks, 1978, 2014). It was firstly derived from multimodal metaphors (Forceville & Urios-Aparisi, 2009), which are metaphors whose target and source domains are each represented mainly and particularly in different perceptual modalities ranging from the basic five categories: touch,

smell, taste, hearing, and sight. To be more precise, crossmodality in language is a subtype of multimodality, and it captures modal convergences and similarities within the sensory perception modes (verbal, visual, taste, smell, etc.) simultaneously though a transformed conceptual structure (Binder and Desai, 2011). In the fields of psychology, communication, and pragmatics, many researches have been conducted to examine topics such as synesthesia (Cutsforth, 1924; Cytowic, 1989, 2002; Day, 1996; Heyrman, 2005; Simner & Hubbard, 2013), synesthesia and synesthetic metaphor (Day, 1996; Gibson, 1966; Lu, 2011; Mandler, 2005; Marks, 1987, 1995, 1996; Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976; Rodríguez, 2001; Shen, 1997;

Shen & Gadir, 2009; Werning, Fleischhauer, & Beseoglu, 2006; Williams, 1976; Yu, 2003;

Zampini & Spence, 2010), and the influence of crossmodality on flavor expressions (Auvray

& Spence, 2008; Cytowic, 2003; Kontukoski et al., 2015; McBurney, 1986; Mozell, Smith, Smith, Sullivan, & Swender, 1969; Murphy & Cain, 1980; Smith & Margolskee, 2001, March 1; Spence, Levitan, Shankar, & Zampini, 2010; Verhagen, Kadohisa, & Rolls, 2004).

Although examinations of the effects of crossmodal expressions on the communication of flavor are still lacking, previous studies have pinpointed the importance of crossmodality in gaining a richer comprehension of human perceptual feelings.

Past researches of multimodality such as those on multimodal metaphors (Forceville &

Urios-Aparisi, 2009) have also supported the view that crossmodality in language is crucial in communication concerning interactions between different perceptual formations such as in classics literature (Hamilton, 2011; Yu, 2003). This possible achievement of depicting two distinctive perceptions to convey the same perception without any hesitation renders the study of crossmodal expressions crucial to understanding the discourse of perceptual experiences. Moreover, though the consequent metaphorical forms of crossmodality cannot

be cognitively comprehended, the audience can still catch the perceptually indicative meaning and the emotional implication from the discourse.

However, studies of crossmodal expressions have mainly focused on the interactions between sight and hearing, rather than those of smell and taste. The study of other types of perceptual depictions, such as flavor expressions, is thus urgently required. Despite the fact that Taiwanese culture is embedded in food to the extent that the pragmatic daily greeting of the people is “have you eaten?” rather than “hi, how’s it going?” linguistic studies of Taiwan Mandarin flavor expressions are scarce. Furthermore, mappings across distinctive perceptual modalities are comparably rare in daily linguistic expressions. Studies of the linguistic percept of flavor are even scarcer in Taiwan Mandarin. To bridge this research gap, the study examines the crossmodal expressions of flavor as an interactive process of perceptual and emotional communication between the tasters and the audience.

1.2.2 Why Coffee Cupping?

Among professional food critics in Taiwan, coffee cupping is a relatively standard practice of evaluating the flavors of drinks, and has burgeoned in Taiwan in the recent decade. Started in the United States, coffee cupping, owing to its use in standard industry practice, became prevalent in the late nineteenth century (Allen, 2010). Compared with the preparations for the evaluation of cuisine (involving a complicated procedure requiring culinary arts skills) and wine (involving a complex processing of fermentation), the preparations for coffee cupping are more explicit and direct. In a standard coffee evaluation, coffee tasters attempt to measure the important flavor attributes specifically by focusing on tactile qualities, such as the body (e.g., oiliness, slipperiness, smoothness, and roughness), astringency (feeling of

constricting body tissues), aftertaste, acidity, balance, and sweetness, along with a series of standard procedures from roasting and brewing to cupping.

In Taiwan, following the growing trend of tasting and evaluating coffee in public, coffee cupping has shown a considerable prevalence in the recent decade. Coffee cupping was first introduced by the faculty of the Department of Agronomy at National Taiwan University in 2004. For the purpose of assisting the cultivation of specialty coffee beans in Taiwan, the standards of arabica coffee set forth by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) were adhered to, instead of those used by major international merchandisers (Wang, 2010).

Since the conducting of coffee cupping has become an annual routine, the world-wide reputation of Taiwan’s specialty coffee beans has also improved (Wang & Lin, 2016).

Moreover, the expression of flavor by coffee tasters during coffee cupping, as evident in their records and notes, is distinct and difficult. The reason lies in the cupping procedure and the standard way of evaluation. During cupping, tasters are asked to comment on the coffee relatively objectively, by giving details in direct connection to an audience’s life experience in order to offer a comprehensive overview. At the same time, cupping practices stipulate a time limit of eight minutes for the tasting of each cup. In other words, there is no extra time for tasters to have a second tasting of the same coffee; they have to offer comments instinctively along with their brief impression of the target coffee. Thus, flavor expressions made during coffee cupping reflect more instinctive human perceptual experiences than the refined food critiques given in publications.

However, linguistic researches on the flavor expressions made during cupping are scarce.

Discussions on “winespeak” seem to be more prominent. In addition, as noted by Caballero (2007), metaphors play an important role in connecting perceptions with linguistic

representations. Crossmodal interactions between taste, smell, touch, and sight can be present in both flavor experiences and expressions (Auvray & Spence, 2008; Caballero, 2007; Marks, 1978). On the other hand, researchers have further suggested that the gap between science and language results in similar but different aspects of the synesthetic phenomenon (Caballero & Suárez-Toste, 2010; Marks, 1996; Paradis & Eeg-Olofsson, 2013).

Unfortunately, none of the researches concerning perceptual expressions mentioned above have been carried out using Taiwan Mandarin-language data. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a thorough examination of coffee critics’ flavor descriptions in Taiwan Mandarin to unveil the mechanisms behind linguistic inventiveness and expressiveness.