Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Sozialwissenschaften

Conceptualizations of Mazeh ‘Gustatory Sense’: A Cultural Linguistic Study

Abstract

Zaynab Karimi

This paper aims to scrutinize conceptualizations of gustatory sensation in contemporary Persian cultural pragmatic schema from a perspective of Cultural Linguistics. Several expressions in which gustatory terms are used reflect cultural metaphors where gustatory is used as a primary domain for conceptual mapping to the domain of emotion. Conducting a corpus-based analysis according to schematic’s model conceptualization of cultural cognition developed by Sharifian, this study indicates how gustatory sensation as English equivalent for Maze is conceptualized. This study also examines particular cultural categorizations of food. Human nature pertains to the concept of ‘gustatory’ in Persian and traces back the root of these categorizations to Iranian culture. The gustatory terms are also used to describe and categorize some things such as color and smell. All in all, the observations made in this paper support the view those conceptualizations of gustatory supply an interface for the interaction between sensory and bodily experiences (embodiment), human conceptual faculties, and cultural conceptualizations.