Food plays a key role in human interaction, and the interplay of food and language offers plenty of opportunities for linguistic research. This seminar focuses on the language used in genres related to food, such as recipes, cooking shows and websites, including interactive settings such as conversations over and about meals, food shopping interactions, or tasting sessions. Aspects for study here are lexis, phraseology and semantics, in particular word choice and vocabulary, instructive sequences, current and historical food terminology, evaluative terms, narratives around food, or the role of food in identity construction and rapport building. We will also combine the language perspective with a broader view on discourse, cultural or historical settings, genres and their development, pragmatics, aesthetics, humor, and, in particular, multimodality. Also of interest are applied aspects such as food business and marketing (in particular of novel foods), politics and food policy. After discussing current research approaches such as discourse, critical discourse, conversation, and corpus analysis, students will select an area of food discourse and perform their own analysis based on examples. Course requirements are detailed in the respective module descriptions. A list of topics for presentations and research will be available in the first seminar session.
- DozentIn: Stefan Diemer