The Political Language of Food
Contributions by Joe Abisaid, Jennifer Adams, Melissa Boehm, Samuel Boerboom, Kathy Brady, Cristin A. Compton, Leda Cooks University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Ellen Gorsevski, Casey Ryan Kelly University of Nebraska -, Justin Killian, Megan A. Koch, Amy Pason, Jessica Prody Edited by Samuel Boerboom
Publication date:
06 May 2015Length of book:
288 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
234x160mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781498505550
The Political Language of Food addresses why the language used in the production, marketing, selling, and consumption of food is inherently political. Food language is rarely neutral and is often strategically vague, which tends to serve the interests of powerful entities.Boerboom and his contributors critique the language of food-based messages and examine how such language—including idioms, tropes, euphemisms, invented terms, etc.—serves to both mislead and obscure relationships between food and the resulting community, health, labor, and environmental impacts. Employing diverse methodologies, the contributors examine on a micro-level the textual and rhetorical elements of food-based language itself. The Political Language of Food is both timely and important and will appeal to scholars of media studies, political communication, and rhetoric.
This collection of 12 essays focuses on the political contexts of producing, marketing, selling, and consuming food, as well as producing 'food language.' Each author approaches a major food-based issue, such as vegetarianism, obesity, or organic foods, by analyzing and deconstructing the language of food as the basis for his or her research methodology. Essays are organized into four sections: 'The Language of Food-Based Social Movements,' 'Food Language and Social Class,' 'The Language of Food Labeling,' and 'Critiques of Corporate Bureaucratic Language.' All contributors are communications, media, or rhetoric professors; though authors from a narrow range of disciplines may support the editor’s thematic emphasis, their homogeneity may prove a weakness when they write about the interdisciplinary field of food studies. . . .Readers will enjoy the provocative essay 'Exoticizing Poverty in Bizarre Foods America.' This anthology can serve classes in sociology, anthropology, geography, marketing, communications, and food studies. For university libraries or large public libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners.