Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T03:10:03.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The smells we know and love: variation in codability and description strategy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2020

THOMAS POULTON Open the ORCID record for THOMAS POULTON [Opens in a new window]
THOMAS POULTON*
Affiliation:
Monash University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The English lexicon is quite impoverished in capturing the perceptual detail of odour qualities. To make up for the lack of smell vocabulary, speakers will often resort to source-based descriptions, a strategy that likens smells to real-world reference points, like ‘mint’. This study examines the instances when Australian English speakers use particular communicative strategies, to explore whether cultural or cognitive influences allow for the easier abstraction of odour qualities. This study combines (1) an odour description task, and (2) a similarity-based sorting task. The results of (1) show that the communicative preferences for describing smells are indeed reliant on source-based descriptions, and the results of (2) show that conceptualisation of odours is primarily based on hedonic valence, and secondarily on salient scents. By combining these results, I find that the communicative preferences vary depending on the conceptualisations of a scent. Scents judged as pleasant receive relatively more abstract descriptions, like ‘sweet’, and show a higher degree of agreement, and the source-based descriptions are particularly frequent among culturally salient scents.

Keywords

smellperceptioncodabilityvalencesalience
Type
Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 501 - 525
Check for updates
Copyright
© UK Cognitive Linguistics Association, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Agapakis, C. M. & Tolaas, S. (2012). Smelling in multiple dimensions. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 16(5/6), 569–575.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Allan, K. & Burridge, K. (2006). Forbidden words: taboo and the censoring of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barkat-Defradas, M. & Motte-Florac, E. (2016). Words for odours: language skills and cultural insights. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Beer, B. (2014). Boholano olfaction. The Senses and Society 9(2), 151–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boster, J. (1994). The successive pile sort. Cultural Anthropology Methods 6(2), 7–8.Google Scholar
Brennan, R. L. & Prediger, D. J. (1981). Coefficient Kappa: some uses, misuses, and alternatives. Educational and Psychological Measurement 41(3), 687–699.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. W. & Lenneberg, E. H. (1954). A study in language and cognition. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49(3), 454–464.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burenhult, N. & Majid, A. (2011). Olfaction in Aslian ideology and language. Senses and Society 6(1), 19–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chrea, C., Ferdenzi, C., Valentin, D. & Abdi, H. (2007). Revisiting the relation between language and cognition: a cross-cultural study with odors. Current Psychology Letters 22(2), 1–14.Google Scholar
Chrea, C., Valentin, D., Sulmont-Rossé, C., Hoang Nguyen, D. & Abdi, H. (2005). Semantic, typicality and odor representation: a cross-cultural study. Chemical Senses 30(1), 37–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chrea, C., Valentin, D., Sulmont-Rossé, C., Ly Mai, H., Hoang Nguyen, D. & Abdi, H. (2004). Culture and odor categorization: agreement between cultures depends upon the odors. Food Quality and Preference 15(7/8). 669–679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crisinel, A. S. & Spence, C. (2012). A fruity note: crossmodal associations between odors and musical notes. Chemical Senses 37(2), 151–158.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dubois, D. (2000). Categories as acts of meaning: the case of categories in olfaction and audition. Cognitive Science Quarterly 1(1), 35–68.Google Scholar
Dubois, D. & Rouby, C. (2002). Names and cateogires for odors: the veridical label. In Rouby, C., Schaal, B., Dubois, D., Gervais, R. & Holley, A. (eds), Olfaction, taste, and cognition (pp. 47–66). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engen, T. (1983). The human uses of olfaction. American Journal of Otolaryngology 4(4), 250–251.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Engen, T. & Ross, B. M. (1973). Long-term memory of odors with and without verbal descriptions. Journal of Experimental Psychology 100(2), 221–227.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Floyd, S., San Roque, L. & Majid, A. (2018). Smell is coded in grammar and frequent in discourse: Cha’palaa olfactory language in cross-linguistic perspective. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 28(2), 175–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holley, A. (2002). Cognitive aspects of olfaction in perfumer practice. In Rouby, C., Schaal, B., Dubois, D., Gervais, R. & Holley, A. (eds), Olfaction, taste, and cognition (pp. 16–26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaeppler, K. & Mueller, F. (2013) Odor classification: a review of factors influencing perception-based odor arrangements. Chemical Senses 38(3), 189–209.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Khan, R. M., Luk, C. H., Flinker, A., Aggarwal, A., Lapid, H., Haddad, R. & Sobel, N. (2007). Predicting odor pleasantness from odorant structure: pleasantness as a reflection of the physical world. Journal of Neuroscience 27(37), 10015–10023.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Köster, E. P. & de Wijk, R. A. (1991) Olfactory adaptation. In Laing, D. G., Doty, R. L., & Breipohl, W. (eds), The human sense of smell (pp. 199–215). Berlin & Heidelberg: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruskal, J. B. (1964). Multidimensional scaling by optimizing goodness of fit to a nonmetric hypothesis. Psychometrika 29(1), 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landis, J. & Koch, G. (1977). The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 33(1), 159–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Larsson, M., Öberg-Blåvarg, C. & Jönsson, F. U. (2009). Bad odors stick better than good ones: olfactory qualities and odor recognition. Experimental Psychology 56(6), 375–380.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, A. P.-J. (2014). Lexical categories and conceptualization of olfaction in Amis. Language and Cognition 7(3), 321–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (2000). Yélî Dnye and the theory of color terms. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10(1), 1–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, S. C. & Majid, A. (2014). Differential ineffability and the senses. Mind & Language 29(4), 407–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Majid, A. & Burenhult, N. (2014). Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language. Cognition 130(2), 266–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Majid, A., Burenhult, N., Stensmyr, M., De Valk, J. & Hansson, B. S. (2018). Olfactory language and abstraction across cultures. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 373(1752), 1–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Majid, A. & Kruspe, N. (2018). Hunter-gatherer olfaction is special. Current Biology 28(3), 409–413.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Majid, A., Roberts, S. G., Cilissen, L., Emmorey, K., Nicodemus, B., O’Grady, L. … Levinson, S. C. (2018). Differential coding of perception in the world’s languages. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(45), 11369–11376.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Majid, A., Speed, L., Croijmans, I. & Arshamian, A. (2017). What makes a better smeller? Perception 46(3/4), 406–430.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Malt, B. C., Ameel, E., Imai, M., Gennari, S. P., Saji, N. & Majid, A. (2014). Human locomotion in languages: constraints on moving and meaning. Journal of Memory and Language 74, 107–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGann, J. P. (2017). Poor human olfaction is a 19th-century myth. Science, 356(6338), eaam7263.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moss, A. G., Miles, C., Elsley, J. V & Johnson, A. J. (2016). Odorant normative data for use in olfactory memory experiments: dimension selection and analysis of individual differences. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, e01267.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O’Meara, C. & Majid, A. (2016). How changing lifestyles impact Seri smellscapes and smell language. Anthropological Linguistics 58(2), 107–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plümacher, M. (2007). Speaking of colors and odors. In Plümacher, M. & Holz, P. (eds), Speaking of colors and odors (pp. 61–84). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poulton, T. (2020a). English odour description task. Open Science Framework <https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DGWM5>.CrossRef.>Google Scholar
Poulton, T. (2020b). English odour sorting task. Open Science Framework <https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/D59H8>.CrossRef.>Google Scholar
Rouby, C. & Bensafi, M. (2002). Is there a hedonic dimension to odors? In Rouby, C., Schaal, B., Dubois, D., Gervais, R. & Holley, A. (eds), Olfaction, taste, and cognition (pp. 140–159). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
San Roque, L., Kendrick, K. H., Norcliffe, E., Brown, P., Defina, R., Dingemanse, M. … Majid, A. (2015). Vision verbs dominate in conversation across cultures, but the ranking of non-visual verbs varies. Cognitive Linguistics 26(1), 31–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sezille, C., Fournel, A., Rouby, C., Rinck, F. & Bensafi, M. (2014). Hedonic appreciation and verbal description of pleasant and unpleasant odors in untrained, trainee cooks, flavorists, and perfumers. Frontiers in Psychology 5, e00012.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shepard, G. H. Jr. (1999). Pharmacognosy and the senses in two Amazonian societies. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of California, Berkeley, USA.Google Scholar
Simpson, E. H. (1949). Measurement of diversity. Nature 163, 688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soudry, Y., Lemogne, C., Malimvaud, D., Consoli, S.-M. & Bonfils, P. (2011). Olfactory system and emotion: common substrates. European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Diseases 128(1), 18–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevenson, R. J. (2010). An initial evaluation of the functions of human olfaction. Chemical Senses 35(1), 3–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Viberg, Å. (1983). The verbs of perception: a typological study. Linguistics 21(1), 123–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warriner, A. B. & Kuperman, V. (2015). Affective biases in English are bi-dimensional. Cognition and Emotion 29(7), 1147–1167.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, D. A. & Stevenson, R. J. (2006). Learning to smell: olfactory perception from neurobiology to behavior. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Winter, B. (2016). Taste and smell words form an affectively loaded and emotionally flexible part of the English lexicon. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 31(8), 975–988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winter, B. (2019). Sensory linguistics: language, perception, and metaphor. Amsterdam & Philedelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wnuk, E. (2016). Semantic specificity of perception verbs in Maniq. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Radbound University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.Google Scholar
Wnuk, E. & Majid, A. (2014). Revisiting the limits of language: the odor lexicon of Maniq. Cognition 131(1), 125–138.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yeshurun, Y. & Sobel, N. (2010). An odor is not worth a thousand words: from multidimensional odors to unidimensional odor objects. Annual Review of Psychology 61, 219–241.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zarzo, M. (2008). Psychologic dimensions in the perception of everyday odors: pleasantness and edibility. Journal of Sensory Studies 23(3), 354–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zarzo, M. (2012). What is a fresh scent in perfumery? Perceptual freshness is correlated with substantivity. Sensors 13(1), 463–483.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zarzo, M. & Stanton, D. T. (2009). Understanding the underlying dimensions in perfumers’ odor perception space as a basis for developing meaningful odor maps. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics 71(2), 225–247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed