Disputing taste: food pleasure as an achievement in interaction

Abstract

While identity has been a dominant topic in research on food choice, literature on identity in consumers' everyday life is scarce. In this article we draw on insights from discursive psychology to demonstrate how members of an online forum on food pleasure handle the hedonic appreciation of food in everyday interaction. We examined 40 discussions consisting of 1715 e-mails related to culinary topics. The analysis focuses on the way in which the participants of this forum work up and establish their identities as "gourmets". A dominant tool in performing this identity work is the discursive construction of independent access to knowledge of and experience with food items, so as to compete with or resist the epistemic superiority of a preceding evaluation. Data are presented with nine examples of the 73 manifestations of the construction of independent access. Contrary to sensory approaches to food choice, this study depicts the enjoyment of food as an interactional achievement rather than a pure physiological sensation. Wider implications of this study for the relation between food, identity and taste are discussed.

It tastes better because … consumer understandings of UK farmers’ market food

“…Evaluating food and articulating those evaluations is a process that rests between the food and its consumer, as Korsmeyer (1999: 136) There are variations in how people consider food or enjoy it, or even dislike it (see Fairburn & Harrison 2003), and often taste is not constructed around an innate object but rather around the associations that the object represents (Makatouni 2002). Farmers' market food can ascribe 'membership to a range of possible memberships' (Sneijder & te Molder 2006: 108) -for instance, a knowledgeable, ethical, health conscious or cultured consumer (Barnett et al 2005;Kloppenburg et al 2000;Miele 2006). In these instances, evaluations are emboldened through, for instance, the food's association with the place of the market and the meanings that it generates.…”

5. Culinary Linguistics: The Chef’s Special

“…Finally, in an online discussion forum on food pleasure, users construct themselves as 'gourmets' for instance by using objective evaluations or physical experiences with food as "proof " (Sneijder & te Molder 2006, cf. also Diemer & Frobenius this volume, cf.…”

“How do you know?”: everyday negotiations of expert authority

“…In her reaction, Natural again employs the idiom LTYB, now to force closure of the knowledge discussion. Her assertion that this is "just like I said" (line 15) conveys that her mind has not been changed by Kuklos but that she has been thinking along these lines all this time, independently of what others may have said (Heritage & Raymond, 2005;Sneijder & te Molder, 2006). Now that the indirect advice has been made controversial, Natural particularises the idiomatic expression to its circumscribed domain: "their own body, not on the entire humanity" (lines 19 and 20).…”

“…(line 20) before repeating the idiom. The success marker "exactly" constructs a position of independent epistemic access to the object being assessed and retrospectively transforms Candle's turn into support for Natural's position (Li, 2008;Sneijder & te Molder, 2006). Natural implicates that she already held access to the idiom, even though Candle was the first speaker to mention LTYB.…”

“…She constructs losing weight as a side effect, providing as the main reason for taking aspartame products that she "just like[s]" them (line 14). Given the subjective nature of taste assessments, this argument can hardly be argued with (Sneijder & te Molder, 2006;Wiggins & Potter, 2003).…”