Let's tuck into the language of food! We discuss advertisements for plant-based food and for meat and dairy, look at cookbooks with our interview guests, and find out how different descriptions of one and the same dish can make it cost more than twice as much in one place than another. Along the way, five people tell us about their work on everything from multilingualism in Korean coffeehouses to the use of foreign languages in early modern English recipes. Liberally sprinkled with metaphors, episode 32 is a feast of all things culinary and linguistic.

 

The episode is accompanied by a blog - for images, references and a full transcript please visit wordsandactionspodcast.wordpress.com. In the episode, the first of five short clips that we play in this episode is by Keri Matwick, a linguist, educator and food studies scholar at Ninyang Technological University in Singapore. Her mention of chefs' metaphors makes Veronika think of research on wine descriptions, for example this open-access article:

Creed, A. (2026). Wine words, cultural worlds: A systematic review of metaphor and language in global wine communication. Terminology. https://doi.org/10.1075/term.25016.cre 

The second sound clip, by Michael Chesnut, he mentions this article about coffee shops in South Korea:

Curran, N. M., Istad, F., & Chesnut, M. (2025). Standing out and fitting in: Korean coffee entrepreneurs' strategies for survival. Food, Culture & Society, 28(3), 573-592.

The Brexit/breakfast confusion is documented in this video, with serious politicians and news presenters providing unintentional humour.

As mentioned by the hosts, several recent conferences have addressed the topic of language and food, including Digital P(a)lates on the language of online food practices, which was held in March 2026 at th Fee University Berlin (with Keri Matwick as one of the keynote speakers). 

The third clip is by Ursula Kania, and for those of our listeners who read German, we warmly recommend this chapter on lesbian and gay cookbooks:

Kania, U. (2017). Warme Mahlzeiten oder: Was is(s)t eine Lesbe? Eine semiosoziologische Analyse schwul-lesbischer Kochbücher. In H. Dingeldein, & E. Gredel (Eds.), Diskurse des Alimentären: Essen und Trinken aus kultur-, literatur- und sprachwissenschaftlicher Perspektive (pp. 229-247). LIT Verlag.  

Ursula's contribution is followed by a sound clip by Marco Bagli, who demonstrates just how broad the scope of language and food research is, from Italian food at the courts of Elizabeth I and James I to Italianness as a translingual and multimodal identity in digital food discourse. And there is more on metaphor as well in his 2021 book:

Bagli, M. (2021). Tastes We Live by: The linguistic conceptualisation of taste in English. Walter de Gruyter.

Still in the introduction, the hosts talk about marketing plant-based foods. For an article on veganism and masculinity, see:

Brookes, G., & Chałupnik, M. (2022). 'Real men grill vegetables, not dead animals': Discourse representations of men in an online vegan community. Discourse, Context & Media, 49, 100640.

On the plant-based side, Oatley's advert pitting its product against Cowhead, a representative of the dairy industry, can be found here and has been analysed in this article:

Ledin, P., & Machin, D. (2020). Replacing actual political activism with ethical shopping: The case of Oatly. Discourse, Context & Media, 34, 100344.

The metaphor of language as a window pane is proposed by Guy Cook in this book: 

Cook, G. (2004). Genetically Modified Language: The discourse of arguments for GM crops and food. Routledge.

This episode's interview guest, Marcelyn Oostendorp, and Erika talk about cookbooks and the cuisine of the Malay quarter of Cape Town.

Marcelyn mentions this article by chef Ruby Tamdoh on the proliferation of food memoirs:

Tandoh, R. (2017). The meaning of a food memoir. The Guardian, 3 November. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/03/ruby-tandoh-the-meaning-of-a-food-memoir 

The analysis section focuses on the relation between descriptions and prices of dishes in restaurants. Matt mentions a book on the language of menus, while Veronika refers to earlier research on the literacy requirements for writing and costing menus:

Jurafsky, D. (2014). The Language of Food: A linguist reads the menu. WW Norton & Company.

Satchwell, C., & Ivanič, R. (2007). The textuality of learning contexts in UK colleges. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 15(3), 303–316. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk/10.1080/14681360701602190 

Finally, the parallel between sparse food descriptions and empty spaces in advertising for luxury travel is based on this article:

Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A. (2012). Elite mobilities: The semiotic landscapes of luxury and privilege. Social Semiotics, 22(4), 487-516.

And if you're hungry by now - bon appétit!