INTRODUCTION
To loosely paraphrase Steven Poole (2012), trendy eating is the new rock-n-roll. Lest the mind wanders to bygone days of white tablecloths and unpronounceable dinner menus as culinary status symbols, today’s elite dining includes that which is authentic and exotic, has a history and a first name, and is here for a Limited Time Only. This literature review focuses on three research studies that examine the type of language used by media and marketing professionals when discussing or describing cuisine, particularly that which is considered upper-class. The first study analyzes four gourmet food magazines, and determines what food is considered upper class, and why. The second is a corpus study based on marketing language used
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They used six more expensive and six cheaper brands that were all found at the grocery store. They found that more words and a higher reading level were found on the expensive potato chips, whereas fewer words and a lower reading level were found on less expensive potato chips. Distinctive tactics used on the expensive potato chips included describing the chip’s uniqueness, using comparative tactics (such as, “judged best in America”), & negation. Additionally, negation was fourteen times more prevalent on expensive potato chips than on less expensive ones. This included phrases that included words such as “not,” “no,” “n’t, & likewise (such as, “no preservatives”). The researchers indicated that this is a traditional attempt employed by the upper class to distinguish them from the lower class. For the cheaper potato chips, distinctiveness was still employed, but by explaining a chip’s history and emphasizing the tradition associated with it. The researchers also noted that both classes value authenticity, labeling the upper class as that which values natural authenticity, while the lower class values traditional authenticity. Overall while this study was not a conclusive overview on the class distinction prevulent in grocery store marketing, it provided valuable insight into the ways in which words have power to target and appeal to specific demographics of
Today’s society is full of products that have numerous varieties. But, little do customers know about the time before when there was one type of each product. In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Ketchup Conundrum” article, he offers many different situations providing an explanation on how some products came to be, and how some name brands made their way into the business world. Consumers are lucky today that there is almost any variety of product to fit their wants or needs.
The editors of Gourmet Magazine were able to reel in the much sought after author David Foster Wallace to chronicle the events of the Maine Lobster Festival. The editors were expecting an essay about the summer festival that would provoke mouthwatering reactions from the readers of the magazine. Instead, Wallace saturates his essay with sarcasm while, to please his editors, still being able to build a shell around a subliminally satirical message. While using a sarcastic and satirical tone, David Foster Wallace is able to construct on argument that America is ignoring morals as they dine.
When people go shopping there are limitless choices of one product made by different companies, all choices of this product basically do the same thing, but what makes them different is the brand’s name. Companies with brands are trying to get their consumers by presenting their commodities in ways
... Nestle’s quote, Bittman makes his editorial plea to ethos, by proposing proof that a woman of reliable mental power of this issue come to an agreement with Bittman's thesis statement. Bittman also develops pathos in this article because he grabs a widely held matter that to many individuals is elaborate with: "...giving them the gift of appreciating the pleasures of nourishing one another and enjoying that nourishment together.” (Mark Bittman) Bittman gives the reader the actions to think about the last time they had a family dinner and further imposes how these family dinners are altogether important for family time. Therefore, Bittman did a magnificent job in pointing into the morals of his targeted audience and developing a critical point of view about fast food to his intended audience leaving them with a thought on less fast food and more home prepared meals.
The 80’s were a decade of great change. It became obvious that there was a widening between the classes. The middle class was disappearing and people took different approaches to dealing with this fact. One way of life that became synonymous with the 80’s was being a young, urban professional, or what people at the time coined a Yuppie. Due to the widening wealth gap, it became essential to market products as either upscale and downscale. Producers were forced to place their items in one frame of reference of the other, fancy of frugal. To sell items with the high price tag advertisers played on the yuppie habit of compensatory spending. Yuppies did not want to be confused with low class or middle class, so they spent in order to show their status to the world (Ehrenreich, 229).
Americans have long since depended on a falsified ideology of idealized life referred to as the American dream. The construct of this dream has become more elusive with the emergence of popular cultural advertisements that sell items promoting a highly gendered goal of achieving perfection. In “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon states that ads are creating a “symbolic association between their products and what is most coveted by the consumer” to draw on the consumer’s desire to outwardly express high social standing (544). The American dream has sold the idea of equality between genders, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds, but advertisements have manipulated this concept entirely through representations
In today’s world, technology and current norms drive a large portion of everyday life that the vocabulary becomes a common universal language. For example, if you don’t know or understand something, just “google” or ask “siri” about it, write a “blog” about a recent experience, or witnessed the latest “post” that has received over 1.6K “likes”. George Ritzer describes the same thing with the fast food restaurant McDonald’s in his video “The McDonaldization of Society”. He defines McDonaldization as the process by which principles of the fast food restaurant have begun to overflow and dominate all aspects of our world.
In Lavanya Ramanathan’s Washington Post article published in 2015 titled “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ‘ethnic’”, she discusses about people’s preconceptions on the type of food that should be labelled ethnic. Ashlie Stevens also touched on a similar topic in her Guardian article published in 2015 titled “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes culture”. She talks about how people assume that just by eating food from a certain culture, they are able relate to the culture as a whole. Both authors acknowledge the importance of appreciating authentic cuisines, but takes different approaches to convince the audience. Both authors establish credibility by using a wide range of substantiated evidences. While,
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.
Fast food restaurants use many methods to draw customers in. Continuous commercials air with catchy songs, slogans, and fun characters in order to grab America’s attention. According to the book Food Politics, “The fast food and food service industry spend more than $11 billion annually on direct media advertising in magazines, newspapers, radio, television, and billboards” (Nestle 22). These restaurants don’t mind spending millions and billions of dollars just so they can get people to purchase their menu items. American’s get sucked into the allusion that these restaurants are creating and fai...
Klink (2001) found that brand names formed using a combination of sound symbolism and semantics (embedding existing words or parts of the word into the brand name) significantly improves product liking and positioning. Yorkston & Menon (2004) reported the effect of brand preference and purchase intentions; they observed that participants preferred purchasing the ice cream brand name Frosh compared to Frish because the back vowel [ä] is perceived to be smoother, richer, and creamier than the front vowel [I]. These findings have supported the idea that sound symbolic cross-modal associations influence the judgments and perceptions of individuals. However, the range of perceptions that can be potentially affected by sound symbolism seems to be studied in limited scope. At least one study extended the possible range of the effects caused by sound symbolic brand names. Fenko, Lotterman, & Galetzka (2016) reported that brand names and product packaging shape influenced
In order to get a greater sense of the food personality attributes, three episodes from each show’s current season were analyzed to examine the personalities’ mannerisms and culinary identity. These attributes and characteristics were coded and analyzed (see Table 2). Content analysis started with cursory examination of the television episodes. I posed two questions during my initial examinations: how do these culinary personalities present themselves as experts in either the domestic or public spheres, and how do these presentations adhere or diverge from the earlier outlined gender culinary stereotypes. This meant looking at the theme of the shows, setting, the appearance and mannerisms of the culinary personalities, and how well these shows convey the tone of the network. While watching, I took note of any personal anecdotes or memories given while the food was being
Interestingly enough, social media has an impact on our food preferences. On Instagram, a photo-based social media site, highly popular pages showcase, and therefore market, photographs of food to their followers. “If you can get through the Vogue.com holiday dessert roundup—featuring this salted caramel apple pie and more—without your mouth watering,” states the Vogue Magazine Instagram feed, “then you’re one step ahead of us.” Although the audience is only looking at a photograph, the language used as a caption contributes to an idea that the caramel apple pie is delicious, in-demand, and a must-have. In other words, to be normal and to be able to fit in is to find the apple pie enticing.
American culture is changing dramatically. In some areas it’s a good thing, but in other areas, like our food culture, it can have negative affects. It is almost as if our eating habits are devolving, from a moral and traditional point of view. The great America, the land of the free and brave. The land of great things and being successful, “living the good life.” These attributes highlight some irony, especially in our food culture. Is the American food culture successful? Does it coincide with “good living”? What about fast and processed foods? These industries are flourishing today, making record sales all over the globe. People keep going back for more, time after time. Why? The answer is interestingly simple. Time, or in other words, efficiency. As people are so caught up in their jobs, schooling, sports, or whatever it may be, the fast/processed food industries are rapidly taking over the American food culture, giving people the choice of hot
Growing up in New York meant living in a culturally diverse environment. New York can be considered to be one of the melting pots of many countries and cultures; this is no exception for the cuisines that New Yorkers encounter on a daily bases. Many innovations and changes were made to suit the ever-changing desire for taste. Consequently, innovations and altercations have serious effects on the authenticity and originality of the cuisine, losing the major component that makes the food unique to a culture or country. This is especially true to the Chinese food found in New York. However, there is a misconception, when New Yorkers mentions Chinese food, they usually refer to Cantonese cuisines. As Cantonese cuisines is adapted to the match New