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Article published In: Cognitive Approaches to Mind, Language, and Society: Theory and description
Edited by Mario Serrano-Losada and Daniela Pettersson-Traba
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 11:1] 2024
► pp. 130–157

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What frequencies tell us of the foodstuffs used as source domain to conceptualize attractive people in Peninsular Spanish

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Published online: 6 June 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00115.gar
Abstract
This paper offers a study of the foodstuffs used by speakers of Peninsular Spanish when referring to an attractive individual. Two online forums were scanned to automatically search for linguistic realizations of the metaphor an attractive individual is appetizing food. A corpus of 860 short texts was compiled, which contains the food terms used in context. The frequency distribution of the type of food and the variable of gender was measured. Results indicate a preference to exploit the metaphor through salty food products and that the foodstuffs used are highly dependent on the variable of gender. Contrary to previous studies (e.g., Hines, C. (2000). Rebaking the pie: The woman as dessert metaphor. In M. Bucholtz, A. C. Liang & L. A. Sutton (Eds.), Reinventing identities: The gendered self in discourse (pp. 145–162). Oxford: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Rodríguez, I. L. (2007). The representation of women in teenage and women’s magazines: Recurring metaphors in English. Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense, 151, 15–42.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Rodríguez, I. (2008). Are women really sweet? An analysis of the woman as dessert metaphor in the English and Spanish written press. Babel–AFIAL: Aspectos de Filoloxía Inglesa e Alemá, (32), 179–195.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), the frequency of sweets and desserts is not higher with female referents. The findings do not agree with prior assumptions about the foodstuffs used in Peninsular Spanish to conceptualize attractive people and the cultural stereotypes associated with them.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.appetizing food to conceptualize attractive individuals
    • 2.1Food: An ideal source domain for metaphorical conceptualization
    • 2.2The relation between appetizing food and attractive individuals is experientially grounded
    • 2.3Cultural and contextual constraints for the conceptualization of attractive individuals as appetizing food
  • 3.Gender-stereotyped food and beliefs encoded in food metaphors
  • 4.Methodology and data
    • 4.1Methodological approach and procedure
    • 4.2Data
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Frequency distribution
    • 5.2Cross-tabulation results
    • 5.3Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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