The Language of Food: My Background in Eating and Why I've Enrolled

As a linguistics major and cognitive science minor, The Language of Food was certainly not a mandatory part of the curriculum. However, this course appealed to me on another level. My relationship to food has often been somewhat ambivalent. While I've always enjoyed certain dishes more than others, the issue of eating as enjoyment is relatively new. I grew up as an athlete. Nutrition was a passion of mine. Notice, though, that I said "nutrition" and not "food." Food was merely fuel for the machine that was my body. It's nutritional constitution was the essential component. Flavor was just a pleasant bonus. It was not unusual for me to just grill a steak, chicken breast, or salmon, without any spices, sauces, or fancy preparation. Just grill it, plop it down on the plate, and I was ready to chow down. And I had no problem just peeling off each leaf of lettuce and eating it alone...no fancy salad needed. My palate was remarkably unsophisticated. Recently I was debating whether, given the hypothetical choice, I would have an operation to make eating unnecessary. I might actually opt for that imaginary surgery...an outcome that many of my friends would rather die than face. I'm just not that attached to food. I like it...but it doesn't particularly matter all too much.

My parents are on opposite sides of the spectrum concerning food relationships. My mother, of Irish Catholic background, will get angry when faced with hunger. On the other hand, my father, coming from a Russian Orthodox Jewish family, will often simply forget to eat. It's usually the last thing on his mind. He'd also be pleased to eat nothing but cereal for quite a while. I always thought this odd, since food is so important to his side of the family. In fact, my earliest recollections of those relatives were of them urging me to eat, despite the fact that I absolutely abhorred their food. Being thin was practically a crime in that household. Someone once told me that their distaste for the skinny body-type and a finicky appetite was a reaction to the holocaust.

Many people use meal time to converse. My mother always wished that our family would do the same. Sadly, she was faced with too much resistance. My sister, when present (and she rarely was), would read. My father and I wanted to watch sports, leaving my mom to carry on a conversation by herself. Obviously, there wasn't much formality to these family gatherings. To say that I have some rather odd eating habits because of this would be an understatement. I've accumulated a long list of peculiar idiosyncrasies over a lifetime of eating by myself in front of my beloved TV.

These days I've started to expand my flavor horizons and broaden my food choices. Perhaps this class will provide some food for thought. Still, my earlier ambivalence towards food and familial communication didn't mean that I wasn't capable of recognizing the universal connection between these two passions. In fact, even the aforementioned paradigm of "food as fuel" has its own distinct vocabulary, customs, and pragmatic variations. Whether through metaphors, idioms, or the social communication practices of different cultures, there's simply no escaping the conclusion that language affects food and food affects language.