Tea Related Figurative and Nonfigurative Expressions in the World’s Top Fifteen Tea Producing Countries

Abstract

Agricultural life, as a key component of culture, is thought to have a relation with language. Because of this reason, products that hold significance in communities’ lives can leave a mark on their language. Tea, a widely consumed crop, exemplifies one of these agricultural products due to its social significance in many cultures. Nevertheless, studies about tea-related words across different countries remain scarce in the literature. For this reason, this study aims to identify tea-related lexical items in the top tea-producing countries, using a qualitative research method that involved conducting email interviews with 200 homogenously selected participants. Manual analysis of the responses revealed 102 expressions from 14 countries. While some of them are general terms, such as “drinking with or without sugar”, there are some culture-based words or phrases mentioned by the participants from nearly all countries. In several contexts, there are also specific items used for rituals in some ceremonies. The findings demonstrate both diversity and cultural basis of tea-related language, underlining how an agricultural product can be used differently across languages.