The Use of Framing to Conceptualize Specialized Terminology
353Figure 1. Communicative setting in sensory science (adopted from Diederich 2015:
43).
There are two dimensions (from left to right) which are depicted in Figure
1, namely the communication amongst sensory panelists (experts) and the
communication between consumers (laypeople). Expert communication is
characterized by the aims of finding consensus amongst interlocutors and
providing a most objective description of perceptual phenomena. When
communicating with consumers, experts have to find a way to “translate”
subjective assessments into codifiable, comparable judgments. As stated in
the literature, sensory perceptions (especially taste and smell evaluation
which are “inward”) are strongly subjective. This is perhaps due to the fact
that taste and smell perception cannot be allocated to a concrete referential
object, as is the case of visual perception. Instead, we can only ever
assume whether a food product tastes the same to someone else. Figure 1
solely demonstrates natural, i.e. human (vs. instrumental) assessments. As
such this representation suggests interaction with linguistic means.
However, when communicating amongst each other, experts can rely on a
further reference in order to achieve mutual understanding, namely
instrumental findings. In sensory science, the mastication of food is
projected to a setting external to the human oral and digestive tract, which
enables a larger degree of observation, e.g. the change/destruction of a
food product during mastication is investigated with instrumental methods
that allow for a precise examination of the sample. For instance, we can
evaluate the modification of a product’s texture during consumption by
exhibiting it to a simulated fracture process, as is done with a texture
analyzer (see below). In transferring the mechanics of consumption to an