The linguistic term “formulaic language” refers to fixed expressions or sequences
of words that are often used as a single unit and are typically stored in memory
and retrieved as complete units during communication, rather than being constructed
or analyzed anew each time by the rules of grammar. Today, however,
the concept of formulaicity has expanded beyond individual word combinations
to include larger units as formulaic texts. In certain text genres such as
abstracts and recipes, formulaicity is visible not only at the level of wording, but
also in text content, structure, and layout. But it has not been examined in other
text genres where professionals could benefit from this fixed structure in order
to produce acceptable texts. In the present article we aim to analyze if wine
tasting notes can be considered formulaic in nature. To meet our expectations, a
corpus of wine tasting notes written originally in English will be used and collocations
that help build up a text examined; by using Biel’s text-organizing patterns
and term-embedding collocations, and by analyzing tasting notes in terms
of Gülich’s criteria for formulaic texts, the present study will try to show if wine
tasting notes are indeed formulaic. Our findings enhance dictionary entries by
capturing the full spectrum of sensory experiences and professional terminology
in oenology, improving lexical entries in both oenology and general monolingual
dictionaries through the identification and categorization of formulaic
language in wine tasting notes
