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In the three preceding chapters, the topics are what we might think of as the dominant senses. We use expressions such as "I see" or "I hear you" to signal that we understand what our interlocutor has said, and I may say that "I am touched" when I have been emotionally affected by a story or situation. Medical auscultations tend to use sight (e.g., inspecting throat or ears), touch (muscle tone, tissue, swellings), or sound (e.g., listening to heart beat, resonance of lung cavity). But the senses of taste and smell enter the picture much more rarely; and the language related to these two senses is much less developed or metaphorized into other parts of language than those of the primary senses.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-6091-831-5_5

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