The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu

Author: Dan Jurafsky
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039324587X
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
A 2015 James Beard Award Finalist: "Eye-opening, insightful, and huge fun to read." —Bee Wilson, author of Consider the Fork Why do we eat toast for breakfast, and then toast to good health at dinner? What does the turkey we eat on Thanksgiving have to do with the country on the eastern Mediterranean? Can you figure out how much your dinner will cost by counting the words on the menu? In The Language of Food, Stanford University professor and MacArthur Fellow Dan Jurafsky peels away the mysteries from the foods we think we know. Thirteen chapters evoke the joy and discovery of reading a menu dotted with the sharp-eyed annotations of a linguist. Jurafsky points out the subtle meanings hidden in filler words like "rich" and "crispy," zeroes in on the metaphors and storytelling tropes we rely on in restaurant reviews, and charts a microuniverse of marketing language on the back of a bag of potato chips. The fascinating journey through The Language of Food uncovers a global atlas of culinary influences. With Jurafsky's insight, words like ketchup, macaron, and even salad become living fossils that contain the patterns of early global exploration that predate our modern fusion-filled world. From ancient recipes preserved in Sumerian song lyrics to colonial shipping routes that first connected East and West, Jurafsky paints a vibrant portrait of how our foods developed. A surprising history of culinary exchange—a sharing of ideas and culture as much as ingredients and flavors—lies just beneath the surface of our daily snacks, soups, and suppers. Engaging and informed, Jurafsky's unique study illuminates an extraordinary network of language, history, and food. The menu is yours to enjoy.

The Language of Food

Author: Annabel Abbs
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Limited
ISBN: 9781398502253
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
'Exhilarating to read - thoughtful, heart-warming and poignant, with a quiet intelligence and elegance that does its heroine proud' Bridget Collins Two women Ten years A recipe for success Eliza Acton, despite never having boiled an egg, became one of the world's most successful food writers, revolutionizing cooking and cookbooks around the world. Her story is fascinating, joyful and truly inspiring. The award-winning author of The Joyce Girl seamlessly intertwines recipes and meticulously researched history, serving up the most thought-provoking and page-turning historical novel you'll read this year. Explore the enduring struggle for women's freedom, the exhilarating power of friendship, and the creative joy of cooking, through the life of Eliza Acton - finally out of the archives and into the public eye. England, 1835. Eliza Acton dreams of becoming a poet, but when she takes her new manuscript to a publisher, she's told that 'poetry is not the business of a lady'. Instead, he demands a cookery book. Eliza is hesitant but when her bankrupt father is forced to flee the country, she has no choice but to comply. Although she has never cooked before, she is determined to learn and to bring her skills as a poet to the craft of recipe writing. She hires young, impoverished Ann Kirby as her assistant and, before long, the two women develop a radical friendship crossing the divides of age and class. Together, Eliza and Ann break the mould of traditional cookbooks, changing the course of food writing forever. But in the process of doing so, their friendship is pushed to its very limits.

The Language of Food in Japanese

Author: Kiyoko Toratani
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902725799X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Book Description
Many studies on the language of food examine English or adopt discourse analysis. This volume makes a fresh attempt to analyze Japanese, focusing on non-discursive units. It offers state-of-the-art data-oriented studies, including methods of analysis in line with Cognitive Linguistics. It orchestrates relatable and intriguing topics, from sound-symbolism in rice cracker naming to meanings of aesthetic sake taste terms. The chapters show that the language of food in Japanese is multifaceted: for instance, expressivity is enhanced by ideophones, as sensory words iconically depicting perceptual experiences and as nuanced words flexibly participating in neologization; context-sensitivity is exemplified by words deeply imbued with socio-cultural constructs; creativity is portrayed by imaginative expressions grounded in embodied experience. The volume will be a valuable resource for students and researchers, not only in linguistics but also in neighboring disciplines, who seek deeper insights into how language interacts with food in Japanese or any other language.

Eat Your Words

Author: Charlotte Foltz Jones
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 1101934328
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Book Description
Baked Alaska, melba toast, hush puppies, and coconuts. You'd be surprised at how these food names came to be. And have you ever wondered why we use the expression "selling like hotcakes"? Or how about "spill the beans"? There are many fascinating and funny stories about the language of food--and the food hidden in our language! Charlotte Foltz Jones has compiled a feast of her favorite anecdotes, and John O'Brien's delightfully pun-filled drawings provide the dessert. Bon appetit!

The Political Language of Food

Author: Samuel Boerboom
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498505562
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
The Political Language of Food addresses why the language used in the production, marketing, selling, and consumption of food is inherently political. Food language is rarely neutral and is often strategically vague, which tends to serve the interests of powerful entities.Boerboom and his contributors critique the language of food-based messages and examine how such language—including idioms, tropes, euphemisms, invented terms, etc.—serves to both mislead and obscure relationships between food and the resulting community, health, labor, and environmental impacts. Employing diverse methodologies, the contributors examine on a micro-level the textual and rhetorical elements of food-based language itself. The Political Language of Food is both timely and important and will appeal to scholars of media studies, political communication, and rhetoric.

The Languages of Food

Author: Ilaria Cavallini
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788887960488
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 111

Book Description
"Exchanging ideas, creating projects, establishing collaborations: these are events that often take place around a table during a meal and in moments of conviviality, where the quality of the conversation becomes warmer and more empathic. In Reggio Emilia, the choice of having a kitchen in each of the municipal Infant-toddler Centers and Preschools has always conveyed strong meaning, both pedagogical and cultural. the kitchen represents a sort of gastronomic "resistance" that safeguards diversity and values and respects different tastes, religious choices, and medical indications. The kitchen is a place for listening to the families and their habits, as well as for orientation toward the community, where lunchtime becomes a space and context of relationships and ecncounters with the world This is the backdrop for a "cookbook" made up of good recipes, experiences, projects, and thoughts that are constructed and take shape in and around the kitchen"--Page 4 of cover.

Translating Food Sovereignty

Author: Matthew C. Canfield
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503631311
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
In its current state, the global food system is socially and ecologically unsustainable: nearly two billion people are food insecure, and food systems are the number one contributor to climate change. While agro-industrial production is promoted as the solution to these problems, growing global "food sovereignty" movements are challenging this model by demanding local and democratic control over food systems. Translating Food Sovereignty accompanies activists based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States as they mobilize the claim of food sovereignty across local, regional, and global arenas of governance. In contrast to social movements that frame their claims through the language of human rights, food sovereignty activists are one of the first to have articulated themselves in relation to the neoliberal transnational order of networked governance. While this global regulatory framework emerged to deepen market logics, Matthew C. Canfield reveals how activists are leveraging this order to make more expansive social justice claims. This nuanced, deeply engaged ethnography illustrates how food sovereignty activists are cultivating new forms of transnational governance from the ground up.

The Language of Baklava

Author: Diana Abu-Jaber
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307428834
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
Diana Abu-Jaber’s vibrant, humorous memoir weaves together delicious food memories that illuminate the two cultures of her childhood—American and Jordanian. Here are stories of being raised by a food-obsessed Jordanian father and tales of Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts and goat stew feasts under Bedouin tents in the desert. These sensuously evoked repasts, complete with recipes, paint a loving and complex portrait of Diana’s impractical, displaced immigrant father who, like many an immigrant before him, cooked to remember the place he came from and to pass that connection on to his children. The Language of Baklava irresistibly invites us to sit down at the table with Diana’s family, sharing unforgettable meals that turn out to be as much about “grace, difference, faith, love” as they are about food.

Food and Language

Author: Kathleen C. Riley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317442334
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Book Description
Food and Language: Discourses and Foodways across Cultures explores in innovative ways how food and language are intertwined across cultures and social settings. How do we talk about food? How do we interact in its presence? How do we use food to communicate? And how does social interaction feed us? The book assumes no previous linguistic or anthropological knowledge but provides readers with the understanding to pursue further research on the subject. With a full glossary at the end of the book and additional tools hosted on an eResources page (such as recommended web and video links and some suggested research exercises), this book serves as an ideal introduction for courses on food, language, and food-and-language in anthropology departments, linguistics departments, and across the humanities and social sciences. It will also appeal to any reader interested in the semiotic interplay between food and language.

Genetically Modified Language

Author: Guy Cook
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134379013
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
The GM debate is as much a war of words as of facts. Food and farming are being changed forever - yet whether for good or bad is the subject of an increasingly bitter argument. Those promoting GM have mounted an intense campaign, characterising their opponents as terrorists and Luddites, governed by ignorance, irrationality and hysteria. Yet public opinion remains unconvinced and antagonistic. As the argument intensifies and the voices on all sides get louder, Genetically Modified Language cuts through the confusion and controversy to the issues and ideology at the heart of the disagreement. Guy Cook subjects the language of the case for GM to a careful and detailed examination. He looks in turn at the persuasive strategies used by politicians, scientists, the media, biotechnology corporations, and supermarkets, showing how their arguments mix together scientific, commercial, ethical and political criteria, and are seldom as factual and straightforward as they claim. Through analyses of recurrent words and phrases, and of the constant comparisons made with other international issues, he shows how the GM debate has become inseparable from the wider political conflicts of our time. In a final chapter he turns to public reactions to all of the arguments. Throughout this analysis, the campaign for GM is seen as exemplifying disturbing trends in the contemporary use of language for public information. Language which purports to seek clarity and neutrality, and to be a vehicle for informed democratic debate, is in fact achieving the opposite effects: obscuring the issues and manipulating opinion. Written in a clear, accessible style and drawing on illustrative examples, Genetically Modified Language is an insightful look at how language shapes our opinions.