With this
type of synesthesia, words (either heard, spoken, read or simply thought about)
trigger a concurrent of flavour. Some synesthetes with particularly strong
lexical-gustatory synesthesia are constantly assailed by taste impressions
evoked by a huge number of words, but there are also weaker varieties where a
significant but limited number of words give rise to flavour perceptions. In
any case, each word has its own specific flavour, the flavours are consistent and
the synesthete has normally perceived them ever since they can remember.
Synesthetic flavours for words are usually a real sensation felt temporarily in
the mouth, although they may also just be a very strong association,
immediately and automatically induced on perceiving the word in question.
Lexical-gustatory is an uncommon type of synesthesia,
although its exact prevalence is as yet unknown. However, it is a relatively
well-known type, mainly thanks to James Wannerton, the President of the UK
Synaesthesia Association, who has this type and has taken part in numerous
studies and given many interviews so it is easy to find information on his case
(see the list of links below).
As to its actual prevalence, it is reported by Sean Day that 2.89% of 1,143 synesthetes interviewed had lexeme-to-flavour correlations. A figure of “less than 0.2% of synesthetes” can sometimes also be found, as in the important study conducted by Julia Simner et al. in 2005 on a sample of 500 members of the general population no-one reported it at all. However, accounts of lexical-gustatory synesthesia can be found without excessive difficulty, and it is certainly not “the rarest type of synesthesia that exists” as some websites currently claim. Until now there has been no standardised method for determining it, so the figures may eventually prove to be higher. The recent study The MULTISENSE Test of Lexical–Gustatory Synaesthesia: An automated online diagnostic (Ipser, Ward and Simner, 2019) addresses the problem and proposes a useful system for diagnosing this type.
The word-taste
combinations are idiosyncratic and vary greatly from person to person. The
phenomenon can be traced back to the synesthete’s early childhood, as this
seems to be when most or even all of the word-taste pairings are created: in
the case of James Wannerton, for example, all the synesthetic flavours
correspond to food he used to eat as a child, with no words at all tasting of
anything he only began to eat as an adult. Some “logical” connections can be
observed between the inducer (the word) and the concurrent (the synesthetic
flavour): for James, the words cottage, village and message all taste like
sausage, so the relevance of the /idg/ phoneme can be established in this case.
Families of
words often have similar tastes, with the lexeme or root of the word frequently
being the part that carries the taste association, although there can also be
rarer cases in which individual letters determine a flavour. The terms
lexeme-taste, grapheme-taste and phoneme-taste could therefore be used to
describe part of the lexical-gustatory phenomenon. Here is an interesting example of phoneme-taste synesthesia:
So what do
words actually taste of? The flavours can be natural or synthetic and of any
known kind, but sometimes they do not correspond to any taste existing in real
life and are therefore difficult to describe. They can sometimes taste of
non-food items like wax or metal. They can be strong or weak, delicious or
unpleasant. They can have texture. Mixtures of two totally incongruent flavours
can also occur (in the case of compound words, for example).
Although
this type of synesthesia is usually pleasant and not overly invasive in the
synesthete’s day-to-day life, in more accentuated cases it can create problems,
as some words have such an unpleasant taste that they have to avoid hearing or
saying them as far as possible. In other cases the words can be so delicious
that they make the person feel hungry. However, these synesthetes usually say
that they don’t get confused while they’re eating, as the real tastes of the
food are stronger and tend to cancel out the synesthetic flavours of any words
they might be hearing at the same time.
For some
lexical-gustatory synesthetes these perceptions are triggered not only by words
but also by general or animal sounds: “If my dog barks, I experience the taste
and texture of runny custard in my mouth”, says James Wannerton, for example.
Here are
some descriptions written by people with this type of synesthesia:
“I experience a constant flow of flavours. It’s like a drip, drip, drip from an eyedropper on my tongue, one taste after another, varying in strength and intensity and each overlaying the previous one.”
(James Wannerton, on this website. 2017.)
“I have an unbearably salty taste in my mouth when I hear/read/say the words feet, feature and fault. DISGUSTING.”
“Oooh !
interesting! Fault - rice krispy cereal, a bit watery though, feature -
chocolate milk through a straw, feet - kind of bland for me.”
(Source: These comments on the online debate platform Reddit/Synesthesia. 2018.)
This post written by lexical-gustatory synesthete Raea in Reddit/Synesthesia has plenty of comments, questions and answers and gives an interesting picture of how the phenomenon is experienced.
Links
In this short video by BuzzFeed News, "What Your Name Tastes Like", a girl called Friday who has lexical-gustatory synesthesia explains how she tastes a variety of people's names.
For some synesthetes, having strong lexical-gustatory synesthesia can be challenging and unpleasant: it can't be ignored. In his video "Logaesthesia, synaesthesia meets OCD", musician James Landau describes the extreme difficulties he often faces due to a combination of lexical-gustatory synesthesia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“When Senses Collide” is a BBC documentary about synesthesia that explores James Wannerton’s lexical-gustatory world and more cases of people with different types of synesthesia.
Here’s an example of his series of representations of metro lines: “This is what the Toronto subway tastes like.” More information here.
Here's an article on the subject in The Science Times magazine that talks about the interesting experiences of lexical-gustatory synesthete Henry James as he grew up, and here's the original in-depth interview with Henry in Newsweek.
Some studies:
A taste for words and sounds: a case of lexical-gustatory and sound-gustatory synesthesia (Colizoli, Murre and Rouw, Univ. of Amsterdam. 2013)
The MULTISENSE Test of Lexical–Gustatory Synaesthesia: An automated online diagnostic (Ipser, Ward and Simner, Univ. of Sussex, UK. 2019)
Related synesthesia types:
Lexical-olfactory synesthesia (word-smell)
Auditory-gustatory synesthesia (sound/music-taste)
This page last updated: 18 November 2022
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