Why Do Experts and Amateurs Diverge in Their Tastings? A Pragmatic Analysis of Perception

Abstract

This pragmatic study addresses the question of the plural realities that emerge from perception, based on an empirical analysis of the tasting activity of wine amateurs and olfactory experts. Though they share the same requirement of rooting taste in the product under scrutiny, they also significantly differ regarding the constraints with which their tasting results have to comply: repeatability for experts’ tasting results, and activity contiunuation for amateurs. Both therefore foster the emergence of two contrasting realities: a stabilized one for experts; an ‘un-stabilized’ one for amateurs. Both happen to fit with the ‘fiction’ and the ‘reference’ modes of existence of Latour’s inventory, which extends and relaunches the analysis of the coexistence of activities initiated by the works on ‘boundary objects’ some decades ago. Finally, the notion of taste is reinterpreted as a translation operator between tasting realities.