This paper examines at how language and food intersect and interact in gentrificationprocesses. As a capital-driven social process aiming at enhancing the socioeconomicvalue of urban space, gentrification implies mobility both in the sense that it attractsnew people, businesses and capital to an area, and in the form of displacement ofless affluent and prestigious people, businesses and semiotic resources from centralto marginal urban spaces. The paper examines linguistic and visual traces of suchmobilities in two neighbourhoods in Gothenburg, Sweden. Based on the observationthat food and food practices are central for the production and reproduction of socialdistinction, the analysis centres on food related establishments and signs. In particular,it discusses the distinction-making function of prestigious languages, elite gastronomicregisters, and gourmet food trucks, and how these depend on the marginalizationof low status languages, popular gastronomic registers and cheap generic food carts.People’s interaction with these resources contributes to the reconfiguration of socialand urban space.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.