|
When and Where: alternate Thursdays (starting 11 January), Humanities and Social Sciences 7077
Instructor: Jonathan Cohen
(joncohenREMOVETHIS@aardvark.ucsd.edu (omit text in caps, which reduces automated spam))
office: (858) 534 6812
Office hours: Tuesdays 1:30-3:00, in H&SS 8072 (and by
appointment; please feel free to call)
In this senior seminar we'll be investigating these and related
questions about wine, wine perception, and talk about wine by reading
together Adrienne Lehrer's classic, Wine and Conversation
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983).
Most of the issues we'll study arise in other domains of sensory
experience, and so are not unique to wine.
But focussing on wine is convenient -- partly because there are large
and well-labeled corpora of talk about wine, and partly because it will
be useful to constrain our set of examples to a single domain with
which we all have some experience.
In addition, every student will be required to bring a written
question (maximum 4 sentences) raised by the reading to every
session after the first.
These will form the basis of the class discussion, so it is essential
that they be handed in every meeting.
Overview
People use a staggering variety of language to talk about wine and
their experiences drinking wine.
These include some relatively straightforward descriptions (tannic,
concentrated, pineapple flavored) but also some that seem
extremely unstraightforward (from the cartoon above, naive, without
breeding, presumptuous, etc.).
What, exactly, is going on in the use of such language?
Do people manage to communicate any information by its use?
If so, what?
How do their descriptive choices interact with beliefs about the
categories of wine they taste?Course Expectations
Students will be expected to read the assigned chapters, come to
discussion, and participate in discussion.
Grading
All senior seminars are graded P/NP.
You must hand in written discussion questions at every meeting (after
the first one) to receive a P in the course.
Tentative Schedule
| Date | Topic | Reading |
| 11 January | Introduction, planning | None |
| 25 January | Theory: Wine and Semantics | Lehrer, ch1-3 |
| 8 February | Experiment: Wine and Subjects | Lehrer, ch4-8 |
| 22 February | Communication: Wine and Wine Talk | Lehrer, ch9-11 |
| 1 March | Catchup and Conclusions | None |