Constructing veganism against the backdrop of omnivore cuisine: The use of adjectives and modifiers in vegan food blogs

Abstract

The proliferation of food as a resource for identity construction and distinction in industrialized countries seems to have coincided with the advent of the internet and the rise of new technologies for sharing information and for interacting across space. One such happy marriage of foodiness and computer or technologically mediated communication (CMC or TMC) is instantiated by vegan food blogs. They allow the bloggers and their followers to construct and celebrate a certain food-based lifestyle, to create symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1984) and a virtual, but, nevertheless, meaningful and relevant community across the globe. In the context of culinary linguistics (Gerhardt, Frobenius & Ley 2013), food blogs are of interest since they are connected to the centuriesold genre of the recipe. In the linguistic study of CMC, blogs represent an essential area of inquiry because of their importance in terms of popularity, reach, and ubiquity. Still, there has been little work to date analyzing the construction of specific food lifestyles such as veganism in the new media, especially with regard to language use (but see Hart 2018, and Sneijder & te Molder e.g., 2009). This paper adds to our knowledge about CMC, uniting the internet genre “blog” with the discursive conveyance of a lifestyle choice. In the field of culinary linguistics, this paper meets the increasing interest in inquiries at the crossroads between language and food. The analysis also contributes to an understanding of pre- and post-modifications in nominal phrases/groups and adjectives following copular verbs in English, German, and French, and how these are mobilized in vegan blogs.