All too often, folks use descriptions that refer to human senses through elevated language to start conversations about things that have nothing to do with senses. This can be on referring to a genre as having a flavor or insinuating that one may have a taste for an author or media outlets variety. The practice is so common that it’s made a situation that’s out of control. That the senses have some applicability to anything outside of their explicit purposes which are unique to the individual applying them appears to be an unaddressed mistake since the emergence of the Western middle class. This was lead by English prose writers that carried the habit over from their day-to-day smalltalk. The answer to “why did you like that movie” being “it’s like that cheeseburger I once ate”, can really only be a human approach toward describing anything which often confuses people trying to make sense of what’s meant. This isn’t meant to trivialize the experience of being human, and instead is an attempt to highlight the unique experience of something that ought to be held in much higher regard.
The dictionary definition of taste is, “to ascertain the flavor of by taking a little into the mouth.” (Webster). Still there are expressions that are common in writing such as when one “has a taste for something”, or “eats one’s own words”, or “drinks it up”. Folks use these when not applying their ability to say what they mean. Doing this isn’t wrong, but they often refer to context that’s inaccessible to the reader, when used in writing. It was originally in the discussing of small talk that these sayings became common. This type of speech is used to direct where a conversation may go based on another persons response, or otherwise elicit a response through the body language of the other person they were talking to in order to figure on what should be talked about next.
On referring to a various authors last name (here, Jones), when it’s said that, “I’ve got a taste for Jones”, it’s not then remotely appropriate to bring the discussion toward the explicit implication that some action that includes the exhumation and subsequent slow-roasting of Jones’ bones for the actual eating of Jones. It’s instead meant that, were it to be the case that ones mind through ones own senses of thought, taste and hearing were all collectively a hypothetical “mouth”, they’d prefer to place Jones’ content in that mouth as just as they would like to place a cheeseburger into the literal mouth their face. This generally sounds strange to actually write or otherwise say out loud, so folks generally apply figures-of-speech to carry their point across to the reader.
While folks have different tastes for different cheeseburgers, in all cases the content of Jones is always going to be the same thing. Sometimes there are translations, but this is outside the scope here. In the case of a cheeseburger, never once was it actually the same cheeseburger that was consumed twice. In the case of literature, it’s the interpretation of the content that varies in such a way that folks get different thoughts and opinions of Jones that are different that of a cheeseburger. The ability to form such a strong opinion which is enabled by their ability to apply critical thought to Jones’ work. In no cases can one “return” to an eaten cheeseburger that is one and the same it was previously. If one were to do as much, then upon consuming it, they’d not likely have have an entirely different opinion on what it was in the same way one can come back to Jones’ content just the next day and think differently about it. The trivialization of any concept in this way can inadvertently cause readers to entirely miss the authors point.
In the past there was an appropriate place for these sayings, such as in poetry and other works of alliterative fiction. James Sutherland, in discussing prose, astutely points out that prose writers have, “That ‘fastidiousness of taste’ which ‘shrinks from familiar and idiomatic phraseology’ [which] had made itself felt in eighteenth-century poetry at a rather earlier stage than in its prose … there seemed to most of the poets and critics good grounds for a corresponding elevation of language.” (Sutherland 107). What this means was that there was an understanding that the types of elevated language that included allegories to human senses had an agreed upon place where they were appropriate to use.
This agreement seems to have been abandoned in the modern writing of anything on the internet where these elevations adorn simple communications as if they were a form of poetry. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, nor are they wrong in doing so, but this has changed the interpretation of what is and is not meant to be appreciated for phraseology, and what is and isn’t meant to convey a more direct point. Sutherland mentions a few authors and their periodicals such as Joseph Addison’s prose style in his own Spectator and Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729). Both use these sayings in their wording, including Sutherland himself. Addison presents a style that incorporates higher language in describing that there are, “Rules for the Acquirement of such a Taste as that I am here speaking of,” where he wasn’t talking about food at all (Addison para. 7).
Swift uses a more vulgar incorporation of the human sense of taste when he writes, “their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable,” in using the periodical content as an allegory to highlight the audacity of the British Parliament at the time in which he implied people were better off selling their children for food (Swift para. 17). A reference to Michel de Montaigne’s On Cannibals (1580) would be appropriate in trying to make the point that within 150 years between these writings, these axioms were placed into periodical prose. This may have been an attempt to suggest to a lower intelligence reader that they, too can make their own points in words by copying the style of the author. Contrary to this, Montaigne writes, “They make use, instead of bread, of a certain white compound, like coriander seeds; I have tasted of it; the taste is sweet and a little flat.” (Montaigne 154). He does this in a way that does not demean the individuals, nor anyone, nor does he also belittle his own capacities in doing so. A comparison of this to Swifts’ and Addisons’ styles here should reveal some differences in thought across time.
While Sutherland discusses Addison, who implies “palatability and taste” are relevant to finer aspects of writing such as in Addison’s Spectator No. 409, his analysis is irrelevant in this modern internet age. This is because most Western folks are subject to such a vast variety of foods that the implications of “taste and refinement” are washed out. Other more recent classes of folks such as AI may not even have the requisite machinery with which they could taste anything at all. If one makes a reference from cuts and selections of an author that one likes and then spices and prepares those cuts in such a way that they find palatable, the distilled essence of the authors that Addison’s referring to are just a summary of the footnotes they’ve left of them in their own imperfect mediums. When used to discuss a topic with a large audience, endearing phrases becomes unintelligible generalizations for which a specific example may have been a better choice.
The point here today is that there are billionaires that love fast food, it’s often the poor and indebted that pursue foods and smells they cannot afford through “high end restaurants” and “expensive perfumes”. Dog food can be higher quality than a lot of human food. The reference point for what’s acceptable for the application of this class of maxims has, in this era, often become an impediment to reading in trying to decipher the authors meaning when using attributions of taste and smell. This is supported by a recent study on the taste of food (here, hot sauce) where they found that, “the subjective taste of the sauce is a product of both the actual and expected spiciness,” (Rawat). By extension of using the analogy to taste in writing, each instance of one’s understanding of the written word of another will also be necessarily based on context that has nothing to do with what’s written. That “refinement of taste” has any correlation with some contrived hierarchy of tastes and smells is inapplicable to most writing now, except in specific cases such as poetry or fiction. To continue in this assertive manner is more of an appropriation, at this point, rather than a useful application of the written word.
Works Cited
Addison, Joseph. “The Spectator No. 409. On Good Taste” FullReads, 1712, https://fullreads.com/essay/no-409-from-the-spectator/. Accessed 28Jan2025.
Montaigne, Michel de. ‘Of Cannibals’. The Complete Essays of Montaigne – Donald M. Frame Translation, 1958th ed. https://bu.leganto.exlibrisgroup.com/leganto/readinglist/citation/34088842270001161/file/viewer. Accessed 28Jan2025.
Rawat, Sachin. “Your Mind Shapes How Food Tastes before the First Bite.” Big Think, 13Jan2025, https://www.bigthink.com/neuropsych/your-mind-shapes-how-food-tastes/. Accessed 28Jan2025.
Sutherland, James. ‘Some Aspects of Eighteenth-Century Prose’. Essays on the Eighteenth Century, Presented to David Nichol Smith in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday. https://bu.leganto.exlibrisgroup.com/leganto/readinglist/citation/41078425430001161/file/ viewer. Accessed 28Jan2025.
Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal.” University of Oregon Renasence Editions, 1999, https://pages.uoregon.edu/rbear/modest.html. Accessed 28Jan2025.
Webster, Merriam. “Taste Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, 26Jan2025, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/taste. Accessed 28Jan2025.