The Language of Food in Japanese

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 des