The Language of Food

Catalog description

How does the language we speak influence how we think? Can the way we talk about food influence how it tastes? What can a data scientific exploration of food language (recipes, menus, reviews, TV food shows, even dinner-time conversations) tell us about our cultural attitudes and framings? What do food migrations and the names for foods tell us about globalization, colonialism, and how languages influence each other? In this course we will answer these questions by using the language of food as a window into linguistics, culture, history, psychology, and data science. We will read classic papers (Bourdieu, Mintz, Ochs, Proust, Whorf), study Spain's history in global food exchange, and integrate Spanish language data science with field work on the language of food in Madrid.