The Discursive Construction of Eating as Entertainment – Carnivalesque Consumption in the Digital Sphere

• Applicant: Dr. Sofia Rüdiger
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 515589187

The proposed project investigates the use of language in (Anglophone) online videos of food excess (i.e., eating shows, cheat day vlogs, excessive cooking shows, food challenge videos and competitive eating videos), where eating is performed as entertainment for others. While much previous work on food and language has focused on contexts of moderation, restriction, sustainability, and health, these 'carnivalesque food videos' of overconsumption have remained elusive in linguistics. "The Discursive Construction of Eating as Entertainment – Carnivalesque Consumption in the Digital Sphere" investigates these under-researched mediated food discourse phenomena via the application of corpus-based discourse analysis and digital linguistic ethnography. 'Eating as entertainment' videos are highly popular in the digital sphere, which reflects the public fascination not only with food and foodways in general but also with gluttony and self-indulgence. The main objectives of this study are to investigate 1) how over-consumption is discursively justified in 'eating as entertainment' videos, particularly with regard to culture-dependent norms of healthy eating, 2) whether there are differences in these discursive justifications with regard to different video genres, 3) which roles the linguistic performances of the video hosts play in their popular allure to a wider audience, and 4) which discursive strategies are used to construct different types of (food-related and other) identities in these videos. To answer these questions, the project envisions the design, compilation, and analysis of several corpora representing various 'carnivalesque' food video genres. Extensive open ethnographic observation will supplement the results gained from the corpus analyses. The insights generated by this project contribute to our understanding of computer-mediated interaction and digitally mediated publics. Comprehending the allure of eating performances and physically distanced acts of co-eating is now more important than ever: even before the Covid-19 pandemic, loneliness has been an increasing problem in industrialized societies. This has been amplified by a magnitude during the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing adoption of 'social/physical distancing' measures. The increasing need for mediated non-co-present interaction goes hand in hand with the need to understand the processes behind this. The proposed project presents a substantial and innovative contribution to our linguistic understanding of phatic food talk and virtual food performances against the backdrop of carnivalesque consumption.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants