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Article published In: Formality and Informality in Online Performances
Edited by Sofia Rüdiger and Susanne Mühleisen
[Internet Pragmatics 5:1] 2022
► pp. 92–114

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Brutal spoons and cheesy gloves

The formal, the informal and the spoof cooking show on web stage

 | University of Bayreuth
Published online: 16 March 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00073.muh
Abstract
In its long presence on television and the internet, the genre of the cooking show has changed and diversified significantly. The initial principally instructional character has given way to more entertaining sub-genres, including parodic ones, that is, ‘spoof cooking shows’ on the internet. The presentation of self (Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) takes on many forms in everyday life, but the possibilities of publicly managing one’s own impression have enormously increased on the largest stage in the world, the internet (cf. Shulman, David. 2017. The Presentation of Self in Contemporary Social Life. Los Angeles: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The blurring of the Goffmanian concepts ‘front-’ and ‘backstage’ are important here in the presentation of self as ‘fake’ or ‘real’ person on the web. This article looks at the diversification of the genre of the cooking show in its transition to the internet, first by investigating strategies of formality or informality (Irvine, Judith. 1979. “Formality and informality in communicative events.” American Anthropologist 81(4): 773–790. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2001. “Formality and informality in communicative events.” In Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, 189–207. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), then by exploring a particular spoof show, Cooking with Paris, as an example of how genre conventions are manifested by undermining.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Cooking with Paris
  • 2.Cooking shows as genre(s): Definitions and diversifications
  • 3.Formality and informality in cooking shows: Performances on backstage and/as frontstage
  • 4.Spoof cooking shows on the web stage: Mimicry, parody, and the real person behind the fake person
    • 4.1Exaggeration
    • 4.2Contradiction and failure
    • 4.3Speech acts and evaluations
    • 4.4Meta-comments and subversive hints
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (27)
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

FIEDLER, Sabine
2022. “Mit dem Topping bin ich auch fein”–Anglicisms in a German TV cooking show. Espaces Linguistiques :4 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Genre in World Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G67], DOI logo

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