Jamie and Nigella and the performance of food-talk: Passionate about food

Chiaro, Delia

doi:10.1075/clu.10.03chi

In:Culinary Linguistics: The chef's special
Edited by Cornelia Gerhardt, Maximiliane Frobenius and Susanne Ley
[Culture and Language Use 10] 2013
► pp. 83–102

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Passionate about food

Jamie and Nigella and the performance of food-talk

Delia Chiaro | Università di Bologna, Forlì

Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 4 July 2013

https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.10.03chi

Despite the nation’s poor reputation in terms of cuisine, cookery shows abound on UK television with Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson being two of TV’s most popular chefs. Following a brief overview of popular cookery programs broadcast in the UK over the past fifty years, this essay will focus on Jamie and Nigella through a description of a series of linguistic features adopted by each, such as their idiosyncratic uses of terminology when giving instructions; modes of interaction with the audience and expressions of emotion. It will emerge that the chefs’ performances, especially in terms of language, take front stage with respect to the dishes they present.

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