Food is never just food. Food holds sociocultural significance based on taste, preference, ritual, tradition, gender, race and ethnicity, social class, and even its origin of place. This course studies how language, culture, and identity are linked to each other through food. It examines the connection between everyday sensory experience and cross-cultural and -linguistic understanding of food. We will read and discuss a range of research on language use in food-related contexts, applying approaches to various data sources such as restaurant menus, recipes, mealtime conversations, food packages, mukbang (livestream of eating), food advertisements & informercials, and reality TV shows. Students will conduct small-scale research projects by collecting and analyzing a body of data concerning any language-and-food topic, while also applying course concepts to the collected data.
Discourse Analysis, (interactional) sociolinguistics, and qualitative research methods
This course combines lectures, group activities, discussions, and tutorials.
After successfully completing the course, students will be able to
- Critically examine and explain the use of language and discursive phenomena in foo-related contexts.
- Better understand the ways language, food, and identity are linked to each other.
- Advance their knowledge of sociolinguistic theories and approaches in the context of food discourse.
Engagement (attendance, preparation, and participation): 20%
1 food bio: 2.5%
3 mini-projects (10% each): 30%
noticing: 10%
Final project: 37.5%
All required readings will be posted on Moodle.