Sémantisme autour du vin : représentations symboliques et lexiculturelles

Abstract

In this study the semantic values of the term wine will be analyzed. It has been a quite controversial term along history. Each historical period has conceptualized it in their own way, from the Middle Ages to the 21st century going through the Renaissance and the classics. The wine has its own language, understanding it in a broad sense as an expression and communication system; a language which has caused opposite representations in multi-disciplinar fields and it admits approaches from complementary angles (tasting-inspiration) and, sometimes, opposite (wine-drunkenness). Its implicit «added » value –not recorded from the lexicographic point of view –provides it with that «shared cultural load» evoked by Galisson. The semantic values of this term will be analyzed from three human behaviours which are delimited in contrast to the linguistic use: the drinker, the taster and the artist or creator. If the first one transforms the wine into something banal, the terminology becomes metaphor when the drinker becomes taster and reaches his/her sublimation in the sensations that the artist projects in the plasticity of his/her aesthetics.