Language Log: What do wine tasting notes communicate?

"It's nicer to think of a message being composed, sent, received, understood, evaluated, and acted on," says Mark.

"I put a message in the envelope, I give it to you, you take it out" does not seem a very rich model. It's precisely the poetic function of language that's missing from this communicative model.

"...we might value winetalk for the same reason that we value a lot of other writing: not because the writer's perceptions are the same as our own, but because they're different."

Yes, exactly, but why is that a "bleak view of communication"?

True communication only occurs when one realizes that the other person is not just some other version of one's self.

Implications for Wittgenstein's "private language" argument: if human beings actually do perceive sensory data differently, then there are things that are not, strictly speaking, communicable. I'd love to think the color blue was actually a different color for each person.