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Метафорические средства описания вкусового ощущения в современной англоязычной культуре
The paper presents an analysis of metaphors which are used to describe flavor in the 21st century English-speaking culture. The analysis is based on the up-to-date theories of taste developed within the Humanities, on the one hand, and the most relevant ideas of Metaphor Studies, on the other hand. Among the latter is the Discourse Metaphor Theory advanced by J. Zinken. According to this theory, metaphor can serve as a framing device, setting general conceptual landmarks for oral and written narratives. The research was conducted on the basis of MasterChef, the world-famous culinary show, in all its regional English-medium variants. The author made a sample of five hundred metaphors, which is representative enough to achieve the main objective of the research, which is to reveal the patterns of metaphorical activity in conceptualizing flavor and model the metaphoric landscape of flavor in the contemporary English-speaking culture. The research shows that the metaphoric landscape of flavor is constructed around several key metaphors, which can be identified as discourse metaphors. They include FLAVOR IS AN EVENT, FLAVOR IS A DIMENSIONAL OBJECT, FLAVOR IS BALANCE, FLAVOR IS A LIVING BEING, FLAVOR IS A FORM OF ART. Each discourse metaphor can be used as it is, represented in speech by the most typical verbal means (cf: A lot is going on there – the purest form of the event metaphor). It can also be represented by a multitude of its subordinate forms. For instance, the subordinate forms for the event metaphor are FLAVOR IS MOTION (which, in its turn, is superordinate for the metaphor FLAVOR IS A JOURNEY), FLAVOR IS AN IMPACT, FLAVOR IS AN EXPLOSION, and others. Genetically different metaphors may be combined within one description conveying different aspects of flavor. Metaphor expands the repertoire of means used for communicating flavor experience and is a full-fledged means of its cognition and verbalization, alongside the so-called qualia terms.