Non-expert wine discourse interpretation: A pragmatic approach

Abstract

Analyses of how wine experts use language to describe wine experience abound in academic works from different perspectives. However, little attention has been devoted to understanding the processes underlying wine discourse interpretation by general consumers, a large segment of the wine community that often lacks essential specific lexical and conceptual knowledge of the field. In this paper a proposal is built about how non-expert wine discourse interpretation develops. Based on Relevance theory together with a close analysis non-expert preferences and the specific design of the linguistic stimuli, we construct a hypothesis about the inferential nature of wine discourse interpretation and the lines along which this process could develop.