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Talking about wine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Adrienne Lehrer
Adrienne Lehrer*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Abstract

People frequently comment about wine when drinking it; but to what extent do they mean the same things by the words they use ? A structural analysis of the wine vocabulary used by wine experts is given. Experiments involving typical wine drinkers show that there is little consensus in how the words are applied to wines. Moreover, communication tasks show that the sender and receiver of messages about wine perform little better than chance.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 1975 , pp. 901 - 923
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 Linguistic Society of America

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