THE SEMIOTICS OF FOOD

THE SEMIOTICS OF FOOD

Food is a sign system which is more about cultural capital, subjectivity, gender and social class than about filling your stomach. Claude Lvi-Strauss used cooking as a metaphor for the way the 'raw' images of nature are 'cooked' in culture so that they may be used as part of a symbolic system. Food can function as a commercial strategy (the business lunch), a social event (the feast), a gift, or a means of telling fortunes (plum stones, fortune cookies). Cultural capital Food is a very visible part of consumer culture. As the metaphor 'taste' suggests, it plays an important part in the creation of 'cultural capital' (Pierre Bourdieu): table manners, the fashion for sun-dried tomatoes, knowing the right wine to drink with which food. It is cheaper to impress with an expensive meal than expensive clothes, cars or houses. The food industry invests huge sums in changing food images: beef is a recent example. Meat is processed to make it look less and less like dead animals, and the blunt Anglo-Saxon words for animal-killing (knackers, slaughterers, shambles ) have been replaced by Romance words (abattoir, butcher.) Subject 'We are what we eat'. Food often becomes the way identity is expressed: the terms the French and English have used to describe each other are 'Rosbiff' and 'Frog'. In the Anglo-American Puritan tradition, it is an important focus of anxieties about health and dying. 'Ethnic' food practices like using olive oil and eating organically-grown vegetables become coopted into a 'healthy eating' system. Gender In traditional households, the kitchen is one place where women are still empowered, and this control over the selection and preparation of food has led to food having different cultural meanings for men and for women. Women still dominate everyday cooking in both paid and unpaid settings (in high-earning situations men predominate, as chefs). For women, eating is a source of particular pleasures (and the corresponding feelings of guilt: dieting, bulimia, anorexia). The film of Fielding's novel Tom Jones (1963), for example, emphasised links between food and sexual practice. Today recipes and recipe books, which often top the bestseller lists, have been described as 'pornography for women'. 'Upper-class [British] males prefer the nursery and school food on which they were brought up, just as they prefer the thrill of nanny's smacks to grown-up sex' (Jane Jakeman). Class Eating habits encapsulate many aspects of social history, often expressed through language. Task: Match the names of these kinds of meat with those of the corresponding animals: venison pork mutton beef sheep deer cow pig 'Below the salt', a term based on the hierarchies in feudal halls, became a general expression for low social rank. Class is still a significant factor in determining, for example, mealtimes, eating practices, and levels of sugar and fat. In the England of the Middle Ages, the poor drank ale and the rich drank wine, a pattern still to a great extent prevailing today. As soon as food is no longer consumed by the poor, it can move upmarket and become part of the 'National Heritage' ('ploughman's lunch', laver bread). Often the name must be changed in the process: a flan becomes a quiche, a caf is renamed Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, a cheap restaurant is called a carvery). Food habits are not static. In the Middle Ages, more pepper was consumed than sugar, while today the per capita figure for the latter is 70kg. Other changes, such as the introduction of peanut butter in the 1940s and wok cooking in the 80s, reflect the multi-cultural pattern of life in Britain.

http://www.eng.umu.se/culturec/FOO.htm[2/28/2012 4:09:30 PM]

THE SEMIOTICS OF FOOD

The eighteenth century brought the introduction of gin (from ginever, the Dutch for juniper) while the public house, offering food and accommodation, developed out of the old coaching inn. The industrial revolution brought with it city taverns, gin palaces - and the temperance movement, founded in Bradford in 1830. From the First World War until 1988, pub opening hours were firmly restricted to maintain productivity. The advertising of alcohol is not only legal but forms a large part of advertising revenue. Go home.

http://www.eng.umu.se/culturec/FOO.htm[2/28/2012 4:09:30 PM]