Culinary Linguistics (2024)

We would like to thank the student helpers of English linguistics, above all Isabel Schul and Daniel Recktenwald, for their help, and also our colleagues at the English department of Saarland University and everybody else for not "spilling the beans." Aperitivo Overview of the volume Maximiliane Frobenius Saarland University The present volume contains a collection of original research articles from multiple disciplines, revolving around the common theme of language and food and the manifestation of the two within their cultural framework. This section gives a brief overview of the general structure of the volume and of the individual contributions. Similar to the intricate task of composing a four course meal for invited guests, the assembling of an edited volume demands a sense of "what goes together. " The metaphor of the menu serves as the vehicle for the order of contributions: we start with an introduction to the whole field of research (Antipasti), move on to contributions in the form of original research articles (Primi Piatti and Secondi Piatti), and close with a bibliography of language and food (Dolci). The first set of articles, Primi Piatti, has been grouped together for its clear focus on language as it is used in specific genres whose main themes are food related. These encompass both spoken and written genres in both electronically mediated settings and printed or even handwritten documents. The second set, Secondi Piatti, represents research on food related language use within specific cultural settings, where it represents a tool to shape and construct the context it is situated in. These contexts range from the perpetuation of gender roles, controlling the degree of formality in a work setting, or expressing a commercial register through the naming of businesses. Thus, we might say that the Primi Piatti contributions work from a more specifically linguistic perspective, or a micro-level analysis, compared to the Secondi Piatti studies, which take a macro-level stance in that they investigate phenomena of the cultural setting and therefore go beyond a purely linguistic analysis. Gerhardt's introduction to this volume, our mouthwatering Antipasti, represents an extensive review of the literature revolving around food and food practices. It begins with the interdisciplinary study of food in various fields and subsequently closes in on the more focused description of language studies pertaining to food and its discourses. Primi Piatti is headed by Diemer and Frobenius, "When making pie, all ingredients must be chilled. Including you": Lexical, syntactic and interactive features xi Maximiliane Frobenius Fuller, Briggs and Dillon-Sumner Men eat for muscle, women eat for weight loss: Discourses about food and gender in Men's Health and Women's Health magazines discusses the construction of hegemonic femininities and masculinities with regard to food choices as found in two magazines targeted at women and men respectively. The qualitative study shows how the notions of guilt and morality are closely linked to food consumption, and that articles and ads in those magazines employ them to create hetero-normative identities that depict women as in need of controlling their eating behavior and men as under pressure to perform. Serwe, Ong and Ghesquière "Bon Appétit, Lion City": The use of French in naming restaurants in Singapore explores the use of French on restaurant signs in Singapore, giving both a quantitative and qualitative account of the forms and meanings of the names in relation to their respective business. The study uncovers a correspondence between the idiomaticity/mixing of languages and the type of food served: monolingual, idiomatic French names predominantly belong to restaurants specializing in French food; multilingual, non-idiomatic names often denote cafes or bakeries selling non-French food. Ankerstein and Pereira Talking about Taste: starved for words is a psycholinguistic study of the taste vocabulary of English speakers. It challenges the assumption that words map directly onto physiological and psychological constructs, as the tasks this research is based on show that participants' knowledge of taste is far greater than their use of taste words suggests. The morphological properties of these lexemes, and their use are explored through collocation searches in the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). To sum up, Secondi Piatti combines papers that approach the study of food discourse and food genres as they are embedded in larger discourse patterns and (cross-) cultural settings. This section thus contributes to our understanding of the effects these genres have on societal structures in that they can be employed as tools to express various kinds of meaning. Dolci, our comprehensive Bibliography: Food and language represents the final section of this volume. Antipasti Ich esse selbst täglich. (Loriot) Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es. (Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin) I will not dwell upon ragouts or roasts, Albeit all human history attests That happiness for man-the hungry sinner!-Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.

SECTION V Linguistics and Food Talk

Language and food are intertwined not only through their orality, but also because both are signifying media through which humans negotiate their material and social existence. Many studies of language incidentally include data about growing, sharing, cooking, eating, and advertising food; similarly, many studies of food include linguistic data: words and genres representing food, speech acts organizing its production and consumption, texts detailing its preparation and distribution. And yet the many intrinsic relationships between language and food-between their material production and symbolic comprehension-have only begun to be explicitly theorized or conceptualized. Th is introductory chapter is intended as a fi rst step toward looking at how extant research has generally analyzed the intersection between foodways (i.e., how humans produce, exchange, consume, and think about food) and discourse (i.e., how humans use language for everyday talk as well as ideological pronouncements). Th e following four chapters will then fl esh this out by investigating how research examines or has the potential to examine (1) cultural domains and other shared cultural knowledge about food; (2) historical sources relating to food (from cookbooks to blogs), (3) food talk, or the social interactions that frame, embody, and embroider the procuring, cooking, and eating of culinary fare, and (4) food texts, including all the communicative forms that take shape in our attempts to represent food.

Linguistic and functional peculiarities of an English gastronomic discourse in a fiction text

Humanities science current issues, 2021

The paper examines linguistic and functional peculiarities of an English gastronomic (food, culinary, gluttonic) discourse within a literary text. The observations are based on the novel "Tuscany for Beginners" by Imogen Edwards-Jones. An English gastronomic discourse has recently become a focus of many philological studies. The particular scope of research is made up of compositional features of a gastronomic discourse as a personality oriented kind of interaction connected with the concepts of "food" and "eating". Scholars examine its ethnic and cultural manifestations, verbal realizations, speech and written genres that represent food discourse. In addition, there are theoretical provisions for classifications of gluttonic vocabulary and terminology as well as analysis of their semantic features. Also a gastronomic discourse is viewed as a particular linguosemiotic space with the reference to its lingual presentational features. A specific investigative perspective is outlined in cognitive linguistics that discusses gastronomic discourse as a means of cognition and categorizing the reality. The research undertaken enables the author of the given paper to highlight the peculiarities of a food discourse on various compositional layers of I. Edwards-Jones' novel, to single out lexico-semantic groups of the vocabulary items that verbalize the culinary discourse in the book, to determine the means that fictionalize the type of discourse under consideration. The recipe texts included in the novel's texture also acquire features of a literary work. They become attributed with subjective presentation, additional pragmatic, linguocultural and stylistic connotations. Due to the gastronomic discourse the writer ridicules ethnic stereotypes concerning eating habits and preferences. Cross-cultural markers of the text are present in the authentic food names (mostly Italian) that promote the overall bilingual narration, recipes' presentation as well the diary's entries of the book. On conducting the research the author arrives at the conclusion that the food discourse in the novel can be viewed a poly-functional phenomenon.

Recipes and food discourse in English – a historical menu.

Culinary Linguistics [Culture and Language Use 10], 2013

The article provides a diachronic overview of the discourse of food on the basis of various examples of recipes and more general food related texts, from Old English to the late 20th century. After comparing lexis, syntax and discourse features, three main diachronic tendencies can be observed: first, the focus on a less and less professional audience, second, the gradual introduction of more precise measurements and more procedural detail, and third, an overall reduction in lexical complexity. In addition, some syntactical features remain universal diachronically while others, like the ellipsis of the definite article, are comparatively recent developments. Increasingly frequent is the use of “supporters” and “controllers,” sentences that directly address the reader and provide advice for problematic steps in the procedure and a means to check if these steps were successfully completed. In the most recent examples, more extraneous information, such as health advice, is added. Thus, food discourse is established as a dynamic genre with distinct linguistic developmental patterns.

The Language of Food: A Review of the 2009 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery

Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, 2009

Food and Cooking – Related Words in Translation. Julian Barnes’s The Pedant in the Kitchen (Pedantul în bucătărie)

2017

The present paper considers a few key passages from Julian Barnes’ collection of articles The Pedant in the Kitchen and contrasts them with the Romanian translation. It addresses in particular the issue of how culture-specific culinary terms are adapted for the Romanian target reader while also assessing the restitution of the accompanying humour or irony they elicit in context (if any). As food vocabulary in any language is predominantly nominal, our analysis is mainly aimed at nouns and noun phrases which have to do with: cooking as an activity, cookings as a job, meals and dishes, ingredients (subcategory: partitive expressions), kitchen utensils and cookbooks. If the over-all strategy in translating names of dishes seems to be that of approximation, as far as the rest of the categories is concerned, sometimes each specific term calls for specific measures on the part of the translator.

Kallen, review of Frobenius et al., Culinary Linguistics

Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture, 2014

This is a review of Culinary Linguistics, edited by Cornelia Gerhardt, Maximiliane Frobenius, and Susanne Ley (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2013). The review considers the contents of the volume and suggests that it offers many thought-provoking directions for further research.

" We are what we eat " : Analyzing food and drink idioms in English, French, German, and Spanish

Conventional ways of wording, which span from routine formulae to proverbs, through binomials, collocations, and idioms have been considered indicators of underlying cultural models as well as triggers for the shaping of cultural models. While many figurative idioms and proverbs designate ideas, facts, and evaluations that are culturally boundless in Western terms, the syntactic structures used to disclose them may range from the completely boundless to the totally bound, depending on the source domain. If the source domain is culturally salient, it is more likely that idioms' literal readings will differ more radically across different languages, despite a shared implicated meaning. One particularly salient source domain regards the lexical field of food and drink. By comparing and contrasting food and drink idioms in English, French, German, and Spanish, the aim of this essay is to gauge the extent of the cultural differences experienced by these linguistic communities. The continued social and literary contacts between the English, French, German, and Spanish people have determined a common core of thinking and acting, which has surprisingly resulted in a series of similar food and drink experiences.

Proposal for a Cross-linguistic and Cross-cultural Research Project on Idioms of Food in Europe

2011

Terms like “cross-linguistic” or “cross-cultural” are often used in phraseology research but the main question as to what idioms actually constitute the so-called “phraseological uniformity of Europe” has never been systematically studied. The present paper describes our first steps of a research project which aimes at creating a collection of European idioms containing those units structures regarding the human being's nourishment and feeding, which exceeds the perspective of a simple compilation of phrasemes that are separately treated and alphabetically ordered, but organised as organic elements associated to a coherent system. Key-Words: European idioms, onomasiological field, human nourishment, systemic organization

Food words: essays in culinary culture

Social & Cultural Geography, 2014

'chaotic' geographies of detention and deportation across borders (Hiemstra) further complicate our understandings of the functions and purposes of incarceration. Carceral Spaces succeeds in putting forward a new and interesting series of observations and analyses on the 'paradox and juxtaposition of the ironies of mobility and migration' (see Mountz's chapter). It is a welcome addition to the theoretical and practical study of prisons and immigration detention centres.

Savoring Semiotics: Food in Intercultural Communication

Social Semiotics