Linguistic and functional peculiarities of an English gastronomic discourse in a fiction text

Abstract

The paper examines linguistic and functional peculiarities of an English gastronomic (food, culinary, gluttonic) discourse within a literary text. The observations are based on the novel "Tuscany for Beginners" by Imogen Edwards-Jones.An English gastronomic discourse has recently become a focus of many philological studies. The particular scope of research is made up of compositional features of a gastronomic discourse as a personality oriented kind of interaction connected with the concepts of "food" and "eating". Scholars examine its ethnic and cultural manifestations, verbal realizations, speech and written genres that represent food discourse. In addition, there are theoretical provisions for classifications of gluttonic vocabulary and terminology as well as analysis of their semantic features. Also a gastronomic discourse is viewed as a particular linguosemiotic space with the reference to its lingual presentational features. A specific investigative perspective is outlined in cognitive linguistics that discusses gastronomic discourse as a means of cognition and categorizing the reality.The research undertaken enables the author of the given paper to highlight the peculiarities of a food discourse on various compositional layers of I. Edwards-Jones' novel, to single out lexico-semantic groups of the vocabulary items that verbalize the culinary discourse in the book, to determine the means that fictionalize the type of discourse under consideration. The recipe texts included in the novel's texture also acquire features of a literary work. They become attributed with subjective presentation, additional pragmatic, linguocultural and stylistic connotations. Due to the gastronomic discourse the writer ridicules ethnic stereotypes concerning eating habits and preferences. Cross-cultural markers of the text are present in the authentic food names (mostly Italian) that promote the overall bilingual narration, recipes' presentation as well the diary's entries of the book. On conducting the research the author arrives at the conclusion that the food discourse in the novel can be viewed a poly-functional phenomenon.