The Complete Language of Food blends the realms of food and folklore in a beautifully illustrated encyclopedia of ingredients, including for each entry the food’s unique properties and the facts and folklore behind its use.

A 2015 James Beard Award Finalist: "Eye-opening, insightful, and huge fun to read." —Bee Wilson, author of Consider the Fork Why do we eat toast for breakfast, and then toast to good health at dinner? What does the turkey we eat on Thanksgiving have to do with the country on the eastern Mediterranean? Can you figure out how much your dinner will cost by counting the words on the menu? In The Language of Food, Stanford University professor and MacArthur Fellow Dan Jurafsky peels away the mysteries from the foods we think we know. Thirteen chapters evoke the joy and discovery of reading a menu dotted with the sharp-eyed annotations of a linguist. Jurafsky points out the subtle meanings hidden in filler words like "rich" and "crispy," zeroes in on the metaphors and storytelling tropes we rely on in restaurant reviews, and charts a microuniverse of marketing language on the back of a bag of potato chips. The fascinating journey through The Language of Food uncovers a global atlas of culinary influences. With Jurafsky's insight, words like ketchup, macaron, and even salad become living fossils that contain the patterns of early global exploration that predate our modern fusion-filled world. From ancient recipes preserved in Sumerian song lyrics to colonial shipping routes that first connected East and West, Jurafsky paints a vibrant portrait of how our foods developed. A surprising history of culinary exchange—a sharing of ideas and culture as much as ingredients and flavors—lies just beneath the surface of our daily snacks, soups, and suppers. Engaging and informed, Jurafsky's unique study illuminates an extraordinary network of language, history, and food. The menu is yours to enjoy.

Discover the meanings, powers, facts, and folklore for over 500 herbs and spices in The Complete Language of Herbs—now in a pocket-size edition for easy, on-the-go reference. Along with a beautiful visual depiction, each entry provides the herb or spice’s scientific and common names, characteristics, and historic meanings and powers from mythology, medieval legends, folklore, and flower poetry. Did you know that allspice can be added to herbal mixtures to attract money or luck? Or that sprinkling arrowroot at the doors of your home will keep guests’ negative energy from entering? Reaching the height of popularity during the Victorian era, floriographies—dictionaries of symbolic flower meanings—were an amusing pastime and art to subtly communicate unspoken emotions. To complement the success of The Complete Language of Flowers, author S. Theresa Dietz has scoured historic sources and compiled an equally beautiful compendium in The Complete Language of Herbs, revealing the secrets and powers of hundreds of common and forgotten herbs and spices from around the world. Together with stunning full-color illustrations and two indexes, one for searching by common herb and spice name and the other organized by meaning, this beautiful reference is a must-have for gardeners, chefs, party planners, and food enthusiasts.

The Complete Language of Flowers is a comprehensive and definitive dictionary/reference presenting the history, symbolic meaning, and visual depiction of 1,001 flowers and botanicals from around the world in one volume—now in a pocket-size edition for easy, on-the-go reference.

Baked Alaska, melba toast, hush puppies, and coconuts. You'd be surprised at how these food names came to be. And have you ever wondered why we use the expression "selling like hotcakes"? Or how about "spill the beans"? There are many fascinating and funny stories about the language of food--and the food hidden in our language! Charlotte Foltz Jones has compiled a feast of her favorite anecdotes, and John O'Brien's delightfully pun-filled drawings provide the dessert. Bon appetit!

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.

'Exhilarating to read - thoughtful, heart-warming and poignant, with a quiet intelligence and elegance that does its heroine proud' Bridget Collins Two women Ten years A recipe for success Eliza Acton, despite never having boiled an egg, became one of the world's most successful food writers, revolutionizing cooking and cookbooks around the world. Her story is fascinating, joyful and truly inspiring. The award-winning author of The Joyce Girl seamlessly intertwines recipes and meticulously researched history, serving up the most thought-provoking and page-turning historical novel you'll read this year. Explore the enduring struggle for women's freedom, the exhilarating power of friendship, and the creative joy of cooking, through the life of Eliza Acton - finally out of the archives and into the public eye. England, 1835. Eliza Acton dreams of becoming a poet, but when she takes her new manuscript to a publisher, she's told that 'poetry is not the business of a lady'. Instead, he demands a cookery book. Eliza is hesitant but when her bankrupt father is forced to flee the country, she has no choice but to comply. Although she has never cooked before, she is determined to learn and to bring her skills as a poet to the craft of recipe writing. She hires young, impoverished Ann Kirby as her assistant and, before long, the two women develop a radical friendship crossing the divides of age and class. Together, Eliza and Ann break the mould of traditional cookbooks, changing the course of food writing forever. But in the process of doing so, their friendship is pushed to its very limits.

Many studies on the language of food examine English or adopt discourse analysis. This volume makes a fresh attempt to analyze Japanese, focusing on non-discursive units. It offers state-of-the-art data-oriented studies, including methods of analysis in line with Cognitive Linguistics. It orchestrates relatable and intriguing topics, from sound-symbolism in rice cracker naming to meanings of aesthetic sake taste terms. The chapters show that the language of food in Japanese is multifaceted: for instance, expressivity is enhanced by ideophones, as sensory words iconically depicting perceptual experiences and as nuanced words flexibly participating in neologization; context-sensitivity is exemplified by words deeply imbued with socio-cultural constructs; creativity is portrayed by imaginative expressions grounded in embodied experience. The volume will be a valuable resource for students and researchers, not only in linguistics but also in neighboring disciplines, who seek deeper insights into how language interacts with food in Japanese or any other language.

"Exchanging ideas, creating projects, establishing collaborations: these are events that often take place around a table during a meal and in moments of conviviality, where the quality of the conversation becomes warmer and more empathic. In Reggio Emilia, the choice of having a kitchen in each of the municipal Infant-toddler Centers and Preschools has always conveyed strong meaning, both pedagogical and cultural. the kitchen represents a sort of gastronomic "resistance" that safeguards diversity and values and respects different tastes, religious choices, and medical indications. The kitchen is a place for listening to the families and their habits, as well as for orientation toward the community, where lunchtime becomes a space and context of relationships and ecncounters with the world This is the backdrop for a "cookbook" made up of good recipes, experiences, projects, and thoughts that are constructed and take shape in and around the kitchen"--Page 4 of cover.

Food and Language: Discourses and Foodways across Cultures explores in innovative ways how food and language are intertwined across cultures and social settings. How do we talk about food? How do we interact in its presence? How do we use food to communicate? And how does social interaction feed us? The book assumes no previous linguistic or anthropological knowledge but provides readers with the understanding to pursue further research on the subject. With a full glossary at the end of the book and additional tools hosted on an eResources page (such as recommended web and video links and some suggested research exercises), this book serves as an ideal introduction for courses on food, language, and food-and-language in anthropology departments, linguistics departments, and across the humanities and social sciences. It will also appeal to any reader interested in the semiotic interplay between food and language.