Linguistic Markers of Status in Food Culture: Bourdieu’s Distinction in a Menu Corpus

Abstract

Food is a core element of culture, whose link with identity and socio-economic class has made it an important area of cultural research. In his ground-breaking study, Pierre Bourdieu noted that "oppositions similar in structure to those found in cultural practices also appear in eating habits." His work established deep associations linking food culture, and taste more generally, with social class and other aspects of identity, demonstrating the economic and social determinants of taste and their role in representing distinctions, differences between groups.