Conceptual Metaphor and Metonymy in Russian Wine and Cognac Reviews

Abstract

The article deals with the use of conceptual metaphor and metonymy in Russian wine and cognac reviews. A review of relevant works in Russian and English reveals that, while there is no lack of interest in the wine language topic, a systematic approach to wine descriptors in Russian from the conceptual metaphor standpoint is not present. The research uses the framework of the conceptual metaphor theory, augmented with the recent approaches to sensory words as either monosemous or synesthetic metonymies. The authors collect and analyze more than 200 professional wine reviews and cognac reviews, paying special attention to the descriptive part, which can range from six to 100 words, most reviews falling in between the 30-50-word range. An array of color, taste and aroma descriptors was extracted from the texts. The descriptors, which are treated as synesthetic conceptual metonymies, were then compared and contrasted in order to discover the specific nature of the influence of the beverage type, as well as to test the hypothesis concerning the dominant principle of synesthetic metaphor mappings: hierarchy of evidentiality vs. hierarchy of perception. The analysis reveals several important points about the Russian language of wine and cognac reviews. The lexical categories for wine and cognac descriptors closely resemble one another and the conesponding descriptor categories in the English language. Among the conceptual spheres which are used metonymically to describe aroma are fruit, berries, sweets, herbs and spices, flowers, wood, nuts, other beverages and food. Most categories make frequent use of generic terms, such as fruity, flowery and woody. These groups and the majority of the descriptors for aroma coincide with those for taste; however, the use of the word taste was much more common for cognac reviews. In general, cognac reviews make greater use of the herbs and spices group (vanilla being the most common), as well as the descriptors from the sweets category and sweet fruit and berries; flower and nut descriptors were also more common for cognac, which corresponds to the mouthfeel caused by the extracted substances during the maturation process. The adjectives, nouns and phrases metonymically used for talking about wine color fall into the following groups: metals and minerals, wood, berries and miscellaneous. Another group of synesthetic adjectives involved transfer from one perceptual modality to another, such as fine, rough, bright, and were found to be virtually identical in the description of both beverages. The metaphor 'wine is human' plays one of the key roles in the description of both alcoholic beverages. Such well-established wine terms as elegant, delicate, full-bodied, strong, among others, were found to be common for both groups of reviews. In sum, the results obtained in Russian wine discourse closely resemble those of other researchers in other languages, both in the quantity and quality of the descriptors and the nature of the synesthetic mappings. Although inclining towards the hierarchy of evidentiality hypothesis, they fail to provide decisive evidence for either of the two competing theories. That said, the results from cognac reviews are completely new and, to our knowledge, have not been explored in the English language.