The Political Language of Food

The Political Language of Food addresses why the language used in the production, marketing, selling, and consumption of food is inherently political. Food language is rarely neutral and is often strategically vague, which tends to serve the interests of powerful entities.Boerboom and his contributors critique the language of food-based messages and examine how such language-including idioms, tropes, euphemisms, invented terms, etc.-serves to both mislead and obscure relationships between food and the resulting community, health, labor, and environmental impacts. Employing diverse methodologies, the contributors examine on a micro-level the textual and rhetorical elements of food-based language itself. The Political Language of Food is both timely and important and will appeal to scholars of media studies, political communication, and rhetoric.

Samuel Boerboom is assistant professor of media studies in the Department of Communication and Theatre at Montana State University Billings.

Introduction: How does food language function politically?
Samuel Boerboom
Chapter 1Tracing the "Back to the Land" Trope: Self-Sufficiency, Counterculture, and Community
Jessica M. Prody
Chapter 2 Végétariens Radicaux: John Oswald and the Trope of Sympathy in Revolutionary Paris
Justin Killian
Chapter 3 The Revolution Will Not Be (Food) Reviewed: Politics of Agitation and Control of Occupy Kitchen
Amy Pason
Chapter 4 Haute Colonialism: Exocitizing Povery in Bizarre Foods America
Casey Ryan Kelly
Chapter 5 Pungent Yet Problematic: The Class-Based Framing of Ramps in the New York Times and the Charleston Gazette
Melissa Boehm
Chapter 6Constructing Taste and Waste as Habitus: Food and Matters of Access and In/Security
Leda Cooks
Chapter 7Tying the Knot: How Industry and Advocacy Organizations Market Language as Humane
Joseph L. Abisaid
Chapter 8Corn Allergy: Public Policy, Private Devastation
Kathy Brady
Chapter 9 Family Farms with Happy Cows: A Narrative Analysis of Horizon Organic Dairy Packaging Labels
Jennifer L. Adams
Chapter 10Chipotle Mexican Grill's Meatwashing Propaganda: Corporate-Speak Hiding Suffering of "Commodity" Animals
Ellen W. Gorsevski
Chapter 11Corporate Colonization in the Market: Discursive Closures and the Greenwashing
of Food Discourse
Megan A. Koch and Cristin A. Compton
Chapter 12Mistaken Consensus and the Body-as-Machine Analogy
Samuel Boerboom