EFSS 2019

1. Eating a snake – is that
delicious? (Taste and prejudice)
The semantic field of tastiness
Dr. Borislav Gueorguiev (Assoc. Prof. in NBU)
Culture & Communication of Taste
Sozopol, 4 September 2019 (EFSS’19)

2. Video & Movies
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OP6NaMF4UE
• The snake dinner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MgyRO3c870
• Exploring all our fears and prejudices.

3. • How we define what is tasty? How we define what is delicious? How
we define what is disgusting?
• By exploring the semantic field of tastiness through mapping.
• In our days due to the globalization the world cuisine is multicultural,
and the notion of tastiness is very confused and vague, even fuzzy. So,
we must define strictly the meanings of the basic binary oppositions
formatting that semantic field of testiness as tasty/not tasty,
pleasant/unpleasant (disgusting), soft/hard (chilly), tough/tender etc.

4. What is a semantic field?
Adrienne Lehrer has defined semantic field more specifically
as "a set of lexemes which cover a certain conceptual
domain and which bear certain specifiable relations to one
another".
A conceptual domain is the representation of any coherent
segment of experience, such as love and journeys in studies
of metaphor. A conceptual domain that is understood in terms
of another is called a conceptual metaphor.

5. How we define a semantic field?
• By inductive or by deductive way.
• Inductive way – by a corpora of words, more or less synonymous or
antonymous.
• Deductive way – by a set of binary oppositions presupposed to be
relevant for the semantic field: good/evil, East/West etc.

6. Roman Jakobson
All five external senses carry semiotic functions in human
society.
About taste:…the selection, succession, and grading of courses
and drinks for taste.
(“Language in relation to other communication systems”)

7. Sign systems, based on seven strategic types of
communication
1. Touch: hot/cold; soft/hard; pleasant/unpleasant (disgusting),
2. Smell: soft/hard; pleasant/unpleasant; “Perfume: The Story of a
Murderer” ( Patrick Süskind)
3. Taste: raw (le cru)/cooked (le cuit) – Claude Lévi-Strauss; sweet/bitter;
soft/hard (chilly), tough/tender; tasty/not tasty, pleasant/unpleasant
(disgusting),
4. Hearing: loud/quiet; articulate/non-articulate; pleasant/unpleasant
(disgusting),
5. Sight (Vision): clear/cloudy; articulate/non-articulates
6. Oral: loud/quiet; articulate/non-articulate;
instantaneousness/continuity
7. Written: clear/cloudy; articulate/non-articulate;
instantaneousness/continuity

8. pleasant – unpleasant (disgusting)
known – unknown
domestic - savage
safe – dangerous
order – chaos
reason - prejudice
porc - snake