1.
Introduction
This dissertation revolves around the use of food discourse in Audiovisual texts and their dubbed versions, with a focus on the necessary adaptations which are required in the adapted script.
The first chapter concerns Audiovisual Translation. After a brief overview on the peculiar nature of the discipline and on the related literature, I will show possible ways of carrying out the linguistic transfer in audiovisual products. Special attention is devoted to dubbing, which is one of the most spread modalities in AVT. In that regard, I will illustrate its main advantages and its history in Italy. Hence, I will briefly present the aims of this study, concentrating on the object of analysis, the film Eat, Pray, Love.
The second chapter deals with the issue of food and food-related discourse. The value of food for human beings is discussed from a cultural and social perspective, also showing its contribution to individual identity. Then, the evolution of culinary practices in the US from the early 20th century until the present is described, paying attention to how the attitude towards ethnic cuisines has changed over time and to the progressive assimilation of culinary 'diversity' to national traditions. This passage represents the starting point for an overview on the role of food in contemporary society, including the modalities of allusion to food in discourse in many social domains, e.g. magazines, commercials, blogs, films and television channels. Besides, a separate part is dedicated to the changes which took place in the catering sector, focusing on the linguistic domain and on the use of new strategies in culinary terminology. In this part, the use of foreign languages is foregrounded and many examples of their insertion in menus are provided, indicating the reasons for this well-spread tendency. In this concern, a deeper analysis on the use of French and Italian in American gastrolinguistics is carried out. Reference is made on the one hand to the historical and cultural conditions which led to the present prestige of the two languages, while, on the other, the most frequent linguistic strategies which can be found in menus are illustrated through examples.
The third chapter is the centre of this study, as it contains the analysis of some food-related scenes in the film Eat, Pray, Love. After transcribing the dialogues which are linguistically interesting for the reference to the domain of food, I will group them thematically into different sections related to the following topics: the creation/expression of one's identity, the allusion to existing stereotypes and interaction. For each example, I will carefully analyse, both from a linguistic and a cultural point of view, the differences between the English and the Italian scripts. The purpose of this part, in fact, is to observe the peculiarities which characterise the process of script adaptation when the domain of food is concerned, and how food talk and the process of linguistic and cultural transfer are reproduced in Italian.
In the last chapter, I will present the results of the film analysis and draw some conclusions on the pervasiveness of food discourse in the cinematographic domain as a response to a renewed interest in food and cooking.
2.
Audiovisual translation
2.1 The nature of Audiovisual translation
The expression 'Audiovisual Translation' (in English abbreviated as AVT) is an umbrella term that refers to ‘‘all the methods for linguistic transfer which aim to translate the original dialogues of audiovisual products – that is, products which communicate simultaneously through acoustic and visual channels – in order to make them accessible to a broader audience’’ (Perego 2005:7, my translation).
Nowadays this field of research has a well-defined, stable position within Translation Studies, but it is characterised by a hybrid nature. On the one hand, it is not far from other types of translation, in the sense that AVT ‘‘represents a process of transformation of a text into another one, its recoding and relocation in another linguistic and cultural sphere’’ (Perego 2005:12, my translation); but, on the other hand, audiovisual products cannot be analysed with traditional translating tools due to their peculiar semiotic nature. While in the translation of written texts meaning only rests on one dimension, audiovisual products are characterised by a distribution of the meaning on two levels, the visual and verbal, hence their ‘‘multi-dimensional, polisemiotic nature’’' (Cho 2013:377). Consequently, this kind of translation cannot rely on traditional theories and a different approach is required. A successful approach to AVT needs to be interdisciplinary: this discipline is connected with many other branches of knowledge not directly included in the field of Translation Studies but which can offer useful insights into the meaning making process, among which pragmatics, sociolinguistics and cognitive psychology (Perego 2005).
Perego points out that, in the course of time, three different expressions have been used to indicate AVT. In the first phase, terms like 'film translation' or 'screen translation' indicated the focus on the product – films – or on the medium used for its transmission – the screen – including TV, cinema or computer. In a second phase, the label 'linguistic transfer' was introduced to underline not only the verbal component, but also visual and acoustic
dimensions, while in a the third phase the label 'audiovisual translation' seemed to be more appropriate to refer to the globality of audiovisual products which can be translated.
Many genres fall under this definition: not only films and television series, as one might think, but also ‘‘sitcoms, cartoons, documentaries, corporate videos, commercials, educational and edutainment productions, video games, cookery and property programmes, interviews and fly-on-the-wall docudramas (…)’' (Diaz Cintas 2009:6), each one requiring specific translation modalities. A peculiarity of AVT is, therefore, its strong internal heterogeneity, but its most significant feature (and obstacle) corresponds to its intrinsic limitation: any translation of audiovisual products is necessarily constrained by the presence of the visual component, which is intrinsically linked to the verbal one. The visual dimension cannot be neutralised and screen images affect the elaboration of the new speech, eliciting the translator's ability in finding acceptable alternatives for the target public: ‘‘the fact that the target viewers have the same access as source viewers to the visuals of the programme, and in the case of subtitling and voiceover even to the same soundtrack, has vast implications for the way the translation can be carried out’’ (Diaz Cintas 2009:9).
The issue of constrained translation becomes problematic when images convey cultural meanings which are not immediately translatable. As far as ‘cultural’ translation is concerned, a recurring question among scholars regards the extent to which translators should feel free to adapt original scripts to the target culture. An interesting solution is offered by Herbst's definition of ‘‘pragmatic translation’’: due to their importance for an overall comprehension, fundamental elements of the source text must be maintained, but the translator can modify original dialogues in order to achieve an illusion of spontaneity (1995). This adaptation process can be carried out by means of the substitution of cultural terms with more vague and generic ones, so that they become understandable for a larger audience – for example by adding local colour to expressions that indicate ‘‘everyday life aspects (food, drinks, units of measurement), institutions, anniversaries, places and personalities’’ (Pavesi 2005:5, my translation) – or even with cancellation of the original expression, if too hard to reproduce. Finally, there are some cultural aspects that are difficult to translate across cultures and that represent a real challenge, such as ''humor (...) compliments, swearing, taboo language’’ (Diaz Cintas 2009:9). They require a good knowledge of both source and target cultures and the
translator's creativity and flexibility in expressing the original concept by means of different linguistic structures, with the ultimate goal of creating a sort of 'bridge' between two realities.
2.2 A short history of AVT
Not surprisingly, this field of study does not have a long and well-established tradition. Diaz Cintas (2009) gives a clear account of the main steps in the development of this field of study. In the early 20th century, the field was not recognised as autonomous. AVT academic papers circulated in fact only among professionals, with a marginal visibility. Scholars were not informed about others' works and carried out their research in a field that seemed to be almost unexplored. The following three decades (1950's, 1960's and 1970's) lacked decisive inputs and publications were not noteworthy, with the exception of a few articles about dubbing and the publication of the first volume on subtitling, Le sous-tirage de films by Laks (1957). The turning point can be placed around the 1980's and especially the 1990's, which have been defined ‘‘VT's golden age’’ (Diaz Cintas 2009). A significant event that stimulated a more vivid interest in AVT was the conference on dubbing and subtitling that took place in Stockholm in 1987. Among the several scholars who published their works in those years, Delabastita was one of the first to focus on the multi-dimensional structure of audiovisual products and their practical implications in translation, taking into account dubbing and subtitling's constitutive elements. The creation, in 1995, of a linguistic forum focused on linguistic transfer and audiovisual communication (Perego 2005) contributed to the visibility of AVT, together with other two significant changes, identified by Perego in the technological development and a new linguistic awareness. The technological development involved, on the one hand, a strong need for online material translation; on the other, a substantial change in the production of audiovisual products, including the simplification of the work of audiovisual translators. Globalisation and the digitalisation of multimedial texts contributed to increasing the production and distribution of audiovisual products, too (Cho 2013). Secondly, the changes in linguistic policies that took place in Europe between the 1980's and the 1990's led to ‘‘ (…) a reconsideration of linguistic minorities; media were recognised as useful tools for facilitating the communication, promotion and reinforcement of linguistic and cultural identities’’ (Perego 2005:7, my translation).
The initial, shared indifference for Audiovisual studies is openly recognised by many scholars. In particular, Delabastita (1990) attributed the lack of research in Audiovisual Translation until the early nineties to three main causes: the low prestige given to cinematographic and television products, the derivative component of translation phenomena (considered the cause for translation being so marginalised) and the heterogeneity of audiovisual products themselves. Another reason for the small number of academic papers was the presence of ''material difficulties such as lack of multi-disciplinary knowledge, corpus-related problems and non-availability of dialogue lists'' (Fawcett 1996).
At present, however, the scarcity of material and non-prestigious status of AVT have been overcome, as there are many more resources and – most importantly – Audiovisual Translation has rapidly reached a high status among scholars and universities; one of the visible consequences of this change is the vast amount of publications, PhD dissertations and University courses which appeared from the 1990's onwards (Gottlieb 1992).
2.3 Methods for a linguistic transfer
Over the past twenty years, many new AVT methods have been developed. Bartolomé and Cabrera (2005) pointed out that this growth is related to the combination of several factors, among which there are the great attention paid to the specific needs of some minorities within the intended audience and the need for new methods to translate more rapidly the increasing amount of audiovisual products. The presence of deaf and hard of hearing people, as well as the blind and visually-impaired, stimulated the creation of suitable AVT methods which could meet their needs (intra-linguistic subtitling for deaf people and audiovisual description, respectively). Furthermore, technological development played a relevant role as it provided countries that could not afford the costs of dubbing with more economical strategies.
According to Gambier (2003), there are thirteen ways for linguistic transfer. Apart from the most common methods, such as dubbing, subtitling and voice-over, there are also consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, free commentary, simultaneous translation, multilingual productions, scripts translation, simultaneous or real time subtitling, surtitling, audiovisual description and intra-linguistic subtitling for deaf people.
'subtitling' countries. The distinction can be drawn in geographic terms: South-West countries are associated with dubbing and North-Est ones with subtitling (Perego 2005); however, this classification seems too simplistic (Gambier 2003) and nowadays it is preferable to distinguish 'big' and 'small' countries referring to the number of inhabitants:
A reduced public, a reduced level of film production, limited opportunities to invest, languages which have a limited diffusion and bilingual/multilingual cultural backgrounds (for example Belgium, Wales, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries and the Neatherlands) are sufficient yet not necessary premises that facilitate the choice of subtitling, or even more economic and rapid methods such as voice over (…). Differently, bigger, officially monolingual, populated countries, with wide linguistic areas, tended towards the use of dubbing (Perego 2005:16, my translation).
As for cinema, subtitling is at the present the predominant method in Europe. The following table (by Safar et al. 2011) shows that twenty-six countries use subtitling and only five prefer dubbing; Belgium and Switzerland may opt for either dubbing or subtitling depending on the area.
SUBTITLING DUBBING
Belgium (Flemish-speaking), Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland (German-speaking), Turkey, United Kingdom.
Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria,
Belgium (French-speaking), Switzerland (French- and Italian-speaking); also widely used in France
Table 1. Subtitling and dubbing countries.
The reasons for opting for one method or the other are rooted in European history, as shall be seen below when the birth of dubbing in Italy is described.
First of all, economic motivations have always played a relevant role. Dubbing is a very expensive process, therefore it is used by countries which can recover the costs of production and have a significant number of potential viewers (no less than 15-20 million people, the
range of dubbing costs being around 20.000/100.000€ as compared to 3000/8000€ for subtitling,Paolinelli, Di Fortunato 2005) - whereas smaller ones tend towards more affordable strategies. The relatively low costs of subtitles combine with a greater rapidity and simplicity in the processes of linguistic transfer (Danan 1991). Secondly, it is important to consider social features such as age, sex, social class and level of education, but also the genre and structure of the product, the power relationship between source and target language, the different purpose (education or entertainment), the dimension of the audience and the aim to develop the knowledge of L1 (mother tongue) or L2 (a foreign language) (Perego 2005). However, data show that it is the level of proficiency in a particular foreign language that determines the preference for dubbing or subtitling. As the majority of the audiovisual products that are dubbed in Europe come from the US, it follows that the choice in each country is subordinated by the English fluency of the intended audience which, as shown by Paolinelli and Di Fortunato (2005), in 1997 varied from 1% to 4% for countries like Italy, Spain, France and Germany – which not surprisingly are 'dubbing countries' – and from 15% to 28% for Denmark and Holland, respectively. Finally, subtitling is infrequent in countries whose policies tried to protect the national language (Perego 2005), and dubbing has represented for them the most feasible alternative.
2.4 Dubbing
2.4.1 Some technical aspects
Also called 'lip-synchronisation', dubbing consists in substituting the original audio track of an audiovisual product with a new one, whose text has previously been translated into the target language (Perego 2005).
A dubbed film is the result of many separated steps. As Martinez (2004) explains, the first phase consists in the elaboration of a translated version, which hardly ever faithfully corresponds to the final script: it is frequently used as a draft that can be modified during the proof-reading and synchronisation steps. After these preparatory stages, the new script is divided into takes, composed by few lines, and the real dubbing process begins.
Synchronisation is one of the most important stages. Also called ''adaptation'' or ''revoicing'', it consists in ''the replacement of the original speech by a voice-track which is a faithful
translation of the original speech and which attempts to reproduce the timing, phrasing and lip movements of the original'' (Luyken 1991). It is possible to distinguish three constitutive aspects: phonetic synchrony, kinetic synchrony and isochrony.
Phonetic or lip synchrony consists in reproducing the original position of the lips as
close as possible, in order to give the impression that the translated speech is naturally uttered by the actor. Even without reaching a perfect correspondence among sounds (Fodor 1976), the new version should be careful in respecting the main articulatory movements, including vowels, bilabial and labio-dental consonants, whereas the exact reproduction of sounds is unnecessary, except for scenes which clearly show the articulation point, such as close-ups and extreme close-ups (Chaume Varela 2004). Kinesic synchrony. This expression, first employed by Whitman-Linsen (1992), refers
to the correspondence, in the source and the target text, of actors' head, arm or body movements (Chaume Varela 2004).
Isochrony refers to utterance length: ''the translated dialogue must fit exactly in the time
between the instant the screen actor opens his/her mouth – to utter the source text dialogues – and the instant in which he/she closes his/her mouth'' (Chaume Varela 2004).
Synchronisation is one of the most important steps for the creation of a sense of illusion and naturalness and, for these reasons, it very often determines the success of the dubbing. ''Good quality dubbing (…) should aim to confound all boundaries in the eyes of the viewer. The sign of a good dubbing production is when these boundaries become invisible'' (Kahane 1990:91-116).The above-mentioned synchronisation requirements do not have the same importance in all audiovisual products: the level of precision required largely depends on the genre of the product. As Chaume Varela (2004) noticed, cartoons do not require much effort in synchronisation, because children (and to a lesser extent teenagers) are not sensitive to lip-synchronisation or isochrony and the respect of kinesic lip-synchronisation is sufficient. More specifically, Paolinelli and Di Fortunato (2005) argued that audiovisual products for children
are not economically advantageous and are given less care: both working times and retribution are reduced, often resulting in poor quality. On the contrary, television series and films require a high level of accuracy in synchronisation because they are addressed to adults, who are more likely to notice discrepancies (Chaume Varela 2004).
2.4.2 The pros and cons of dubbing
Dubbing is only one among the strategies used to translate audiovisual texts and even though it seems the most accurate, it is important to stress that none of the above-mentioned is able to maintain the semiotic integrity of the audiovisual product (Pavesi 2005). Length reductions are inevitable. As regards dubbing and subtitling, for example, ‘’(In) subtitling the information often has to be condensed: not all of the words that are said fit into the subtitles. Dubbing too has a limitation: the texts have to fulfil the condition that they must seem to be spoken by the person(s) in the picture. Second, with dubbing the original soundtrack is removed, whereas with subtitling part of the picture is 'covered' with text’’. (Koolstra et al. 2002:327).
In what follows, I list the strengths and the weaknesses of dubbing, basing my account on the works by Diaz Cintas 2001, Gottlieb 1994a and Koolstra et al. 2002.
Some advantages:
Benefit given by the unity of picture and sound
The substitution of the original audio track with a new one still maintains the unity of the visual and acoustic dimensions, facilitating a fluid vision and a high level of concentration. Differently from methods that imply the insertion of a written component, dubbing is useful for those viewers who watch TV and are engaged in other activities at the same time.
Involvement of the majority of the public
Dubbing does not require reading skills and an audio track makes a film accessible to illiterate people, young children or people with reading difficulties.
Cinematographic illusion and sense of familiarity
Viewers usually know the nationality of actors who appear on screen, but thanks to dubbing it becomes natural for the audience to hear them speak in their own language. The illusion is so accurate that ''the version created by the dialogue writer becomes 'the film itself' in the country in which it is distributed, to such an extent that both critics and viewers tend to assimilate the original film and its dubbed version'' (Paolinelli, Di Fortunato 2005:41, my translation). Another effect of dubbing is the creation of a strong sense of familiarity (Mailhac 2000) among viewers when they hear their own language, but both aspects vanish with methods like subtitling and voice-over.
Low level of condensation
Even though synchronisation poses some challenges in adapting new utterances to the length of the original ones, words reduction in dubbing is relatively moderate as compared to other translating methods. For instance, subtitles involve a reduction which varies from 40% to 70% of the original script (Paolinelli, Di Fortunato 2005). With dubbing it is also possible to maintain the original turn-taking structure and overlapping voices, thus preserving the spontaneity and vivacity of the original dialogues.
Script editing
The replacement of the original audio track with a new one gives the opportunity to elaborate a new script that, if necessary, can vary substantially. With dubbing, changes are difficultly detected: ''unless a viewer can read lips perfectly in the foreign language, with dubbed programmes there is no way of checking the translation on the basis of the original soundtrack'' (Koolstra et al. 2002:330). Hence, dubbing allows a high level of content manipulation and the creation of new linguistic structures when it is hard or impossible to transfer the original ones; when target viewers are not familiar with the cultural references made throughout the film, the process of dubbing makes it possible to add explicitations (Kilborn 1993). A negative effect of this freedom, however, is that censorship is more likely to occur, because there is no trace of deliberate omissions or changes.
Some disadvantages:
Substitution of original voices
Removing the original audio track, the risk is that characters' diatopic and diastratic peculiarities may also be lost. Not even the most accurate dubbing process can convey the same linguistic shades and this forces translators to imagine alternative modalities to represent ethnic identity.
Synchronisation constraints
In dubbing, newturns must be as close as possible to the original ones in terms of sentences length and mouth movements, hence in the dubbed version sentences can result longer or shorter than the original and words can be modified in order to achieve a more faithful correspondence with lip shape or movements.
''Prefabricated orality''
Dubbing is frequently described as a mere imitation of real language, a ''language artificially prepared that has little to do with spontaneity of oral speech'' (Agorni 2000:399, my translation). Agorni herself underlined that dubbed language is linked both to written and oral speech because the starting point is a written text, a script, but the result has to sound like spoken language, creating the so-called ''double bind'': the need for a planned orality that appears natural and authentic at the same time (Cho 2013). Besides, in any stage of the dubbing process, the translated text can be manipulated for scenic requirements, even by people that in most cases do not understand the source language, such as the proof-reader and the synchroniser (Martinez 2004), and this largely contributes to its artificiality.
2.4.3 A brief history of dubbing
As Paolinelli and Di Fortunato (2005) explain, the roots of dubbing are closely related to the birth of cinema. The first Italian and French attempts to produce sound films date back to the early 20th century, but it was only after the experiments of the 1920's that the first sound feature film was produced (1926). In the meantime, Americans were carrying out wide research into the development of higher quality speakers capable of transmitting better
all-round sounds to larger audiences. The US – whose films were already well-known in Europe – were already using an amplifier with multiple entries to add sounds which had been separately recorded, the mixer, but during this first stage it was not used for creating audio tracks in different languages. Instead, this problem was solved by shooting multiple editions of the same film, a procedure that turned out to be a disproportioned energies' waste, a ''total failure'' (Parini 2009:19), so that it was abandoned after a few years.
The invention of dubbing dates back to 1930 by Jacob Karol, physicist and responsible for Paramount's German Films, even though similar systems hadalready been developed in 1929 by Hopkins and Messter (Paolinelli, Di Fortunato 2005).
2.4.4 The situation in Italy
In 1930 Mussolini was in charge of the Italian Home Office and the same year, in line with his nationalistic policy, forbade the projections of films which contained foreign language, even if in a small quantity. This law was the predictable consequence of a protectionist tendency, which, at the end of 1929, had already led to the prohibition of ''any foreign word on any occasion'' (Parini 2009:20). It was surely a reaction against the influence of foreign languages on Italian speakers, but at a deeper level it also represented the preventive censorship ''to avoid the arrival, together with language, of a culture which was not controlled by the regime'' (Paolinelli, Di Fortunato 2005:7, my translation).
The first adopted solution was, therefore, the projection of foreign films deprived of the audio. Scenes were interrupted by written captions that explained the meaning of original dialogues: the resulting silent films could be read but not heard. However, critics did not appreciated this modality and, at the same time, a large part of the population was illiterate or had serious difficulties in reading (Paolinelli, Di Fortunato 2005). Hence the decision of supporting dubbing, a method that was accepted by the Fascist regime and could reach everyone, regardless of the level of education. The first synchronisation studio was built in Rome in 1931 and from that date the Italian dubbing industry took her first steps (Paolinelli, Di Fortunato 2005). As has been said, historical events radically determined Italy's propensity for dubbing, which at present produces high quality results and can boast a long-standing tradition. There is no evidence of a trend reversal: according to a study carried out by Safar et
al. (2011), the majority of audiovisual products, about 89% of European films and 63% of US, are dubbed.
2.5 Aims of this study: analysing a film in its original and dubbed version The object of this study is a comparison between the English and the Italian version of some dialogues taken from the film Eat, Pray, Love, an American romantic comedy produced in 2010 by Ryan Murphy, which was adapted from the eponymous novel. The plot itself is likely to offer many clues for analysis in cultural-related topics, as it is entirely focused on the main character's year long trip as a search for a new personal identity and soul renewal in Italy, India and Indonesia. This provides unusual, interesting and somewhat stereotyped cultural insights into the three countries by a foreign visitor, and it also makes it possible to compare the corresponding Italian, Indian and Indonesian adapted versions of the film itself.
The analysis in this work is restricted to some scenes set in Italy. This choice was influenced by the intent to focus on food-related linguistic phenomena only, which can be mainly found in this part of the film. After choosing which scenes to investigate, the analysis focuses on the changes that affect some linguistic and cultural aspects from the original version to the Italian dub. Special attention has been granted to those scenes which represent the typical, traditional American point of view on Italy, such as the importance given to genuine food, the relaxed and open lifestyle and relationships, the community spirit and close socialisation among friends and family, together with the prejudiced or somewhat old fashioned ideas about divorce and the traditional role of woman. The analysis will show how such aspects have been softened and modified in the dub to avoid offending a new Italian audience.
In order to carry out a careful analysis of the scenes, I have transcribed both the original and the dubbed dialogues and I have represented them graphically in a table which is divided into three columns. The original script and the dubbed version are respectively put in the central and in the right column, while the left one is used for the characters' names, the setting and for other types of information, such as the presence of flashbacks and songs which are played in the background (Bonsignori 2009).
I carried out a transcription which is halfway between the orthographic and the prosodic, as it is more detailed than the former but not as completely respectful of the formal conventions as
basically concern two features: the use of punctuation and capital letters for proper names, which is maintained in orthographical transcription, which is ''the recording of what is uttered and performed'' (Bonsignori 2009:3) but not in prosodic transcription, and the reproduction of non-standardised varieties, which are neutralised and represented by means of standard spelling in orthographic transcription but transcribed according to their effective pronunciation in prosodic transcription.
As for the objects of study, they have been the frequent code-switching between English and Italian, the adaptation of diatopical and diastratic varieties, the different representation of Italian and American culturally-specific situations and, particularly, the frequent reference to food terminology, which allows a deeper investigation into the attitudes and the tendencies associated with food practices.
2.6 The process of dialogues transcription
The formal act of transcribing the new text that will undergo the process of dubbing is an important step that precedes the process of dubbing. Despite its apparent simplicity and immediacy, transcribing the script of an audiovisual product is a complex process that involves much adaptation, and great care should be shown towards formal accuracy and towards the paralinguistic level, with the aim of reproducing the original dialogues and the context as faithfully as possible. In fact, although speech reduction is much more necessary in subtitling than in dubbing where it is actuallsy quite moderate, the fact that spoken speech and its typical features have to be represented in writing entails some difficulties in reproducing them appropriately. The extent and the accuracy with which the original speech is transcribed depend on the method chosen by the transcriber, whose first step consists precisely in looking for the best strategy to maintain a balance between readibility and accuracy (Tilley 2003). Together with the problem of how faithful the reproduction of non-standard varieties in writing should be, another controversy which is common to the process of transcription itself and which deserves special attention concerns the representation of so-called paralinguistic devices. These are non-linguistic elements that are not part of real speech but which largely contribute to its interpretation (Ladd 1996), so showing ''communicative behaviour'' (Bonsignori 2009:2). Such devices can be considered to be, on the one hand, pitch, stress and volume shift ('verbal' elements), and, on the other hand, facial expressions, eye-contact and
body gestures ('non-verbal' elements; Ladd 1996). Their importance in an audiovisual context is such that they must be taken into account during the process of linguistic transfer and transcription. If translators are openly challenged to elaborate a new text with the aim of matching new speech with the existent paralinguistic devices, the same work is required by the transcriber, who has to find an appropriate way to signal those elements in writing.
Finally, as underlined by Bonsignori (2009), also the presence of overlapping utterances is likely to cause some problems in the process of transcription. The act of simply writing what is heard in this case does not work, because often the large amount of voices and noises makes it impossible to understand what it said and to recognise who uttered it. Then, in those scenes in which many characters talk simultaneously, the transcriber is required to graphically indicate it by means of graphic symbols (e.g. + can be used at the beginning of the overlapping, and * at the end, but, in case of many overlappings in the same scene, a progressive number before the * can be added, thus allowing for a better comprehension of the dynamics of the dialogues).
3.
Changes in Gastrolinguistics
3.1 The cultural relevance of food
Since the beginning of the history of mankind, food has always had a fundamental, yet ambivalent role in society. On the one hand, it satisfies the biological need of alimentation, therefore it is strictly linked with Nature, but, on the other hand, it has also ''an extra-culinary signifying potential'' (Heise 2013:5) which is closely connected with cultural traditions, a peculiarity which led scholars to compare food to a ''bridge'' between nature and culture (Fischler 1988). If cooking were only reduced to the mere practice of making any type of food edible and eating were simply just a strategy to survive and to satisfy the primitive, basic need of hunger, then the preparation, the consumption and the symbolic value associated with meals would be the same internationally. However, the real situation is far from being that way. Gone are the times when human beings were subordinated to the environment in the field of alimentation and only consumed what they found in Nature in its original form (Pravettoni 2009). The introduction of fire made it possible to transform food and, as a consequence, contributed to the creation of the first cultural differentiations among societies, which over time led to the present ''cultural relativism'' (Guigoni 2008:5). The fact that ''only humans flavor their food and create unique dishes and food styles, such as sandwiches and banquets, Chicken Tikka Masala and French cuisine'' (Gerhardt 2013:4), the wide range of food preparations, cooking methods and alimentary preferences available and the existence of alimentary taboos which can only be attributed to the human sphere are all elements which indicate that human beings load food with further meanings that fall outside the sphere of physical needs. Food has in fact been diatopically and diachronically reinterpreted, re-analysed and retabled in complex and heterogeneous ways, according to social, economical, geographical and cultural factors.
Brillat-Savarin's well-known saying ''tell me what you eat, I will tell you what you are'' (1825) exemplifies how firmly-rooted and long-standing the belief is that food practices directly contribute to the dynamic process of identity development. The taste in the consumption and
preparation of food seems to actively define one's identity in a ''continual work in progress'' (Lakoff 2006:5) and to contribute to the construction of the so-called 'minor identity', opposed to the 'major identity', which is defined by race, gender and sexual preferences (Lakoff 2006). The individual's attitude towards alimentation, thus, reflects specific values and beliefs. Within society, food preferences delineate a specific lifestyle which a social group tends to identify with, and, at the same time, they represent a symbolic differentiation from all other groups (Pravettoni 2009). The distinction which is drawn by food practices among social groups is openly visible. Cooking ''is a language through which (each) society unconsciously reveals its structure'' (Lévi Strauss (1968) 1979:495), and among the most important features which are underlined by the domain of food there are the economical and social structure, the presence of gender-based discriminations, philosophic ideals and religious beliefs (Di Renzo 2010; Gerhardt 2013). However, the most evident aspect which is underlined by food practices is perhaps ethnic identity. National foods, together with national languages, are among the most important expressions of national culture and largely contribute to its construction (Peckham 1998). ''Every coherent social group has its own unique foodways'' (Counihan 1999:6) and the act of emphasizing local gastronomic realities works as a tool for avoiding cultural homogenisation and submission, in order to preserve the history and the identity of the group.
In sum, food practices have a fundamental role in societies, where they represent much more than mere means of subsistence. Food is ''a system of communication'' (Barthes 2008) and has a fundamental importance in ''bonding and group constitution'' (Gerhardt 2013:36); besides, from a cultural perspective, alimentary choices contribute to shape many aspects of the individual and of a social group's identity and to transmit popular, local culture (Gerhardt 2013).
3.2 An overview of culinary practices in the 20th century
Until the 1960's, as Lakoff (2006) noticed, culinary practices in the US were simple both in the domestic and in the public dimension and were not paid much attention. The motivations behind this situation, which characterised the 1920's, the 1930's and 1940's in particular (Zimmerman 2010) were basically poverty and food scarcity, two consequences of wartime:
2010:10) and that is likely to have encouraged neither a conspicuous turnout of customers in restaurants nor the development of refined cooking methods. The activity of cooking in that period was given little consideration, and if that was not completely true for restaurants, it surely was in the domestic space. Here, the task of meal preparation was traditionally associated with women only, which is demonstrated by the fact that cookery books at that time were intended mainly for a female domestic audience (Mennell 1996). Cooking was for them neither a prestigious nor a pleasant activity to carry out: ''quite often, cooking was seen as something the busy housewife had to do, without much desire or pleasure, as efficiently and swiftly as possible'' (Lakoff 2006:158), a necessary female skill in order to be a good wife, to such extent that cookbooks of the first half of the century were openly meant to instruct girls on doing that (Gerhardt 2013). As far as prestige was concerned, cooking was regarded as an elitist activity only when carried out by male, professional cooks in high-end restaurants and it only started to gain prestige in the private dimension in the 1950's (Lakoff 2006). As for the public dimension, as Grimes (1998) argued, in the first half of the 20th century alimentary processes were based on simplicity and sobriety. Restaurants menus, especially economic ones', were direct and effective, devoid of creative expressions which would have also sounded unexpected to the customers of that time; the act of ordering dishes was, both at a linguistic and at a culinary level, routine-bond (Grimes 1998). ''Restaurants tended to provide the same kinds of foods we were accustomed to eating at home'' (Lakoff 2006:144), which, as Zimmerman (2010) pointed out, were besically limited to few kinds of meat and diary products such as eggs and butter.
The American 'culinary flatness' started gradually to evolve from the 1960's. In that period, a renewed economic stability for the majority of Americans offered more opportunities to enjoy pleasures of life; in a predictable way, as people became more familiar with other culinary realities, they started to expect innovations in the art of cooking, too (Zimmerman 2010; Lakoff 2006). In particular, the decade from the 1960's to the 1970's saw the first steps towards a new perception of food. The arrival of the first European chefs in the US, especially from France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, contributed to enrich American culinary practices (Zimmerman 2010) and to import a more refined and elitist conception of food, which, as observed in the first part of this paragraph, was almost unknown in North America. This deep change in the relationship with food and food practices also resulted in writing. As
Tobias (1998) pointed out, in these years recipes cookbooks started to open to innovations, providing more detailed description of recipes, cooking times and measurements; an evident proof of that is the publication of the two best-sellers New York Times Cookbook (Claiborne 1961) and Mastering the Art of French cooking (Child et al. 1961), which radically changed the Americans' opinion of the activity of cooking. Besides, also the physical aspect of food started to be promoted and publicised by the media. Magazines began to provide artistically prepared pictures of dishes with the aim of underlining the colours and the quality of food (Zimmerman 2010), while the television in the 1960's started to offer the first programmes about gastronomy, such as Child's The French chef.
However, these innovations did not lead to an immediate, radical modernisation of all the old conceptions on the domain of food. As for ethnic cuisines, for instance, their integration to the American culture happened gradually. During the first half of the 20th century, it was extremely rare to find ethnic restaurants in the US. The few existent ones were settled in big cities only, while in American restaurants it was almost impossible to serve dishes which went beyond American typical recipes, because even the basic ethnic ingredients were missed, a claim which was recurrent throughout the 1940's and 1950's (Zimmerman 2010). A turning point was the New York's World Fair in 1963, an event in which, as pointed out by Zimmerman (2010), the majority of Americans had for the first time the possibility to taste unknown European and Asian flavours. Effectively, the 1960's saw a period of first contact with other culinary realities, but these were somehow 'kept at distance' and much time had to pass before a real identification with ethnic cuisines could happen. In fact, as stressed by Gvion and Trostler (2008), in these years in the US ethnicity was not regarded as part of the mainstream culture: foreign dishes were presented through the filter of American culinary preferences and were modified to make them more akin to American recipes, thus more familiar and acceptable to the American palate. Even restaurants that identified themselves as Chinese, Mexican or Italian behaved the same way and, in general, the typical structure of the American meal was not questioned by the insertion of ethnic dishes in menus (Lu, Fine 1995). The 1970's were characterised by greater awareness about food practices, which promoted a process of integration of the diversity in the domain of gastronomy. Also thanks to the increasing presence of immigrants in American business districts (Gvion, Trostler 2008),
what was served as an authentic ethnic dish was hardly ever in its original form (Gvion, Trostler 2008). Slowly, restaurants in the US stopped serving dishes which were mere imitations of ethnicity (Zimmerman 2010), but dared to present more authentic dishes only from the 1980's and more so from the 1990's onwards (Gvion, Trosler 2008).
This process gave positive results: nowadays, the average American customer is pleasantly accustomed to ethnic flavours and is not surprised at all to find in his or her menu dishes such as tofu, noodles, kebab, sashimi and tortillas. Instead, they are regarded as the visual proof of the so-called American ''culinary eclecticism'' (Zimmerman 2010:18), as a mixture of traditions which is positively evaluated as source of pride and no more feared.
In conclusion, the 20th century represented a radical change in the way food is approached by human beings. The end of alimentary shortage in the Western world and the improvement of living conditions led to new perspectives on nutrition, as well as the process of globalisation and the consequent 'internationalisation' of foods, which played a determining role in extending the culinary horizons (Masiola Rosini 2004). Therefore, both the attention which is paid to ethnic cuisines and the value which is given to food in every-day life increased.
3.3 The present situation and the new culinary horizons
In the early 21th century, the interest in food reached its climax, not only in the US but in all developed countries. Consumption culture has by now spread everywhere in the Western world and food has become ''discourse'' (Lakoff 2006:147) and the object of many interpretations, a central element in every aspect of our social life. It has itself turned into a true 'item of consumption' publicised by the media, which push viewers, more or less explicitly, to buy food products. Viewers are in fact exposed to food advertisements and commercials which are usually set in an idyllic, peaceful familiar framework with the hidden purpose of tempting potential consumers to further consumerism by means of indirect, sophisticated and creative strategies, e.g. with the use of hyperboles and exclamations (Gerhardt 2013).
As for television contents, if before the 1990's the television programmes which involved chefs and culinary practices were just a few, as pointed out by Chiaro (2013), at present there is a large choice of programmes and television channels entirely dedicated to this topic (e.g. Food Channel; Lakoff 2006) and which are characterised by innovative features. Gone are
also the times when culinary programmes were restricted to the mere, synthetic presentation of the steps that composed a recipe: nowadays celebrity chefs are more ''a combination of chef-performers rather than regular cooks'' (Chiaro 2013: 86) and they behave accordingly. In particular, at present there is more interaction between chefs and viewers, which leads to a shift towards informality. The atmosphere is pretty relaxed; viewers are often addressed with informal nicknames and included in the conversation being referred with the all-inclusive pronoun 'we' (Chiaro 2013:93). Moreover, they are asked to actively participate in the preparation of a meal, thereby challenging the passiveness which characterised the act of instructing in the preparation of a dish in the past. Within this framework, chefs display their culinary and linguistic creativity in referring to food preparation and to the final products making use of unusual terminology. Two examples are the use of slang terms and of refined, almost lyrical poetical expressions, the latter being characterised by a frequent use of words which ''echo class'' and sophistication (Chiaro 2013: 97).
The cinematographic domain reflects this renewed interest in food, too. In recent times, eating scenes have passed from having a marginal to a pivotal role: in more and more films several scenes focus on food, and, in some cases, the whole plot revolves around it (Bower 2004; Keller 2006; Zimmerman 2010).
Nowadays, also the publishing industry invests hugely in the topic of food, by means of appealing cookery books and specific, colourful magazines which range from the presentation of old-fashioned or innovative recipes to restaurant reviews and to debates about the recent culinary tendencies, diets or scientific discoveries linked with food practices. From more 'traditional' titles to those which emphasize the premium-quality of food, to magazines that reflect alimentary tendencies or ideologies (such as vegetarianism and the strict consumption of healthy food, e.g. Vegetarian Times, Eating Well and Cooking Light), nowadays everyone can find the magazine which better suits to his or her needs, including newspapers which recall traditional flavours or which focus on ethnic cuisines (e.g. CyberChef and Taste of Home) and journals which analyse the interrelationship between food and society, history and culture, such as the worldwide known Gastronomica.
The Web as well cannot resist this passion for gastronomy. As Diemer and Frobenius (2013) highlight, there is an impressive number of websites and blogs which are focused on food
(Diemer, Frobenius 2013) and it is also common to find new visual means, such as explanatory how-to videos which show how to carry out the preparation of a dish. In this way, food blogs and websites become similar to cooking programmes, with the main difference that the former are not held by professionals only; instead, many of them are run by amateur cooks who, despite their usual poor professional training and experience, aim at giving their say in the gastronomic universe.
However, for the aim of this study, the innovations which involved the catering sector and the use of language in this context are the most interesting ones, and the following paragraphs will deal with them.
3.4 The new features of the ‘restaurant' frame in the US
The modifications which characterised the domain of catering can be divided into two groups. On the one hand, they concern the 'restaurant' frame, whose constitutive elements, such as the relationship between waiter and customer and the atmosphere, are now more relevant than in the past and are attributed new meanings. On the other, the linguistic aspect of menus is now more foregrounded than it was, a fact which is visible from the strategies which are used for the names of dishes. In turn, these can be divided into two types. One kind concerns the use of creative and purpose-built English expressions, while the other is linked to the introduction of foreign terms in cooking terminology.
For reasons of brevity, here it is not be possible to describe in details the first three kinds of modifications. It is sufficient to notice that, from a sociological perspective, if over time the basic definitions of 'restaurant' and 'menu' have remained, more or less, the same, the customers' roles and expectations have significantly changed (Lakoff 2006). At present, customers are asked to deal with food differently, ''to interact with, to engage in discourse with (...), to play with'' their meal (Lakoff 2006:149). The centrality of customers is a novelty which characterises the last few years: nowadays, everything must aim at taking care of the client, who is metaphorically 'cuddled'. This ''role reversal'' has been observed by many scholars, in particular by Lakoff (2006), who claims that at present is the establishment, through its staff, which has to meet the patron's expectations and no longer the opposite. The customer must be satisfied not only at a 'gustatory' level, but also at a linguistic one. More than ever, the customer wants to feel safe and protected, confident about the quality of food he
or she is offered, but, at the same time, he or she wants to be intrigued and almost 'seduced' by dishes. This act of persuasion is largely left to the linguistic features of the menu, which – at least in the most sophisticated and refined restaurants – have passed from being a mere ''list of food names with prices'' (Gerhardt 2013:43) to a genre with its own register (Zwicky and Zwicky 1980). Dishes and recipes are somehow adorned, 'embellished' through language, by means of linguistic strings – adjectives, adverbs or nouns – which emphasize the quality, the freshness and the elaboration of recipes.
The following paragraphs will focus more specifically on the changes which involve the use of foreign languages, in order to analyse how the American gastrolinguistics of the 21th century takes inspiration from foreign languages and ethnic cuisines.
3.5 The use of foreign languages in menus
A fundamental innovation which characterises the linguistics of menus in the US during the last decades is the systematic (and often not strictly necessary) use of foreign languages. On the one hand, the recent, worldwide diffusion of national dishes is partly responsible for the present internalisation of specialised terminology; however, apart from referring to dishes which are the expression of national, culture-bond recipes, the use of foreign expressions is hardly ever unavoidable. If there are, on the one hand, the so called 'necessity loans' – those which are needed in order to express a new concept that does not exist in a language, e.g. paella and churros for the Latin American world and sushi and sashimi for the Japanese – nowadays the language policy of restaurants is inclined to make great use of the so called 'luxury loans', thus inserting in menus foreign expressions which are superfluous, as the target language owns peculiar linguistic expressions to indicate the original concept (Dardano 2005; D'Achille 2003). In the latter case, the use of foreign languages can be seen as the restaurateurs' attempt to add a touch of charm to the name of the dishes, to capture the attention of customers and to keep pace with the times. The use of a language other than English in American restaurants, in fact, is thought to load the dishes and the restaurants themselves with a sense of sophistication and elaboration. What has been defined a ''linguistic fetish'' (Kelly-Holmes 2005:34) in the linguistics of gastronomy, thus, can be explained as a strategy to add meaning that is not strictly linked with the informative content, as this ''added
expression. Thanks to the insertion of luxury loanwords in menus, the customers' approach towards the reading of the menu changed. The act of going to the corner restaurant at present might not be such an easy, habitual action as it was before. If in the past the use of foreign languages was reduced to French, at present in reading the menu the customer is metaphorically 'assailed' by a remarkable number of terms coming from different foreign languages, which must be decoded if he or she wants to order food in a confident way. Nowadays, the languages that are likely to be found in restaurant menus and consequently require a receptive and increasingly sophisticated customer are mainly Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Thai (Lakoff 2006).
The sense of prestige which seems to be conveyed by the use of foreign terms is responsible for two main linguistic phenomena, both of which are expression of marketing strategies that appeal to make dishes more attractive for customers. Firstly, it led to the creation of several compound expressions which are formed by a foreign word and an English one and, more specifically, to those which make reference to toponyms, thus recalling the (presumed) origin of the dish (Jurafsky 2014; Gerhardt 2013). Even when it is not extremely necessary to specify it, the indication of the exact provenance of the dish has many advantages. Not only it reassures the patron about what he or she is going to eat and allows him or her to feel sophisticated because of the attention paid to alimentary safety (Lakoff 2006); when this linguistic strategy involves the use of foreign terms, it also contributes to capture the customers' attention and to convey a sense of refinement. The resulting expressions, thus, sound double evocative, as the word which indicates the toponym is left in its original form and indexes exoticism (Giani 2009), such as in ''Spaghetti bolognese'' and ''Provencal beef''. As has been said above, the average customer will appreciate whatever will be served in a dish with such denominations, as it is the mere indication of ethnicity – especially if that involves one of the most known cuisines, such as the Italian or the French – which seems to guarantee the patron of a delightful meal. If the reference to a foreign cuisine is made only at a linguistic level, that has little importance, because ''it is not necessarily the original ingredients or original taste that transports authenticity, but the name itself'' (Mühleisen 2003:82). These 'linguistic mixtures' are more and more present in menus, especially in those restaurants which represent the 'fusion cuisine', the latest culinary tendency based on the mix of Eastern and Western cooking traditions. In that context, as observed by Gerhardt (2013), it
is frequent to find ''amalgams of international food terms'' (Gerhardt 2013:44) which, for their heterogeneous nature, sound even more charming and attract the attention of the most daring customers, e.g. ''Boubilasse with pak soia'' and ''Won ton filled with tomato and mozzarella'' (Mühlsein 2003:83). In a ''macaronic menu'' (Zwicky and Zwicky 1980:91) of this kind, only a few customers will be able to exactly recognise the content of their dishes; however, despite the fact that the majority of them is often neither able to understand nor to pronounce the new linguistic expressions, as Teller (1969) claimed, this 'linguistic contamination' is more and more frequent and appreciated. Moreover, as Teller (1969) pointed out, this 'hybridism' can concern more than one foreign language at one time and it is not unusual to find expressions which reflect how this trend has sometimes been pushed to an extreme point, such as ''Ragout of beef tenderloin a la Deutsch'' (Teller 1969): a mix of French and English with a reference to German which is likely to cast doubts about the authentic origin of the dish.
Secondly, there are cases in which meaningless strings of sounds are given new meanings in English and interpreted as really belonging to a foreign language. The mental association is given by the fact that their sounds seem to recall a foreign language and its cuisine, too, hence this method represents a fertile ground for the developments of culinary linguistics.
The average American customer is not likely to have a perfect knowledge of each ethnic cuisine; thus, he or she perceives these purpose-built expressions as the real names of existent dishes and, as a result, he or she is more inclined to order a dish which sounds 'exotic'. Small matter that the link with ethnicity does not really exist: what is important for the customers is to perceive the 'otherness' of what they are served, which in this way marks a difference respect to the traditional cuisine. It is the case of expressions such as ''Chop-suey'' and ''Mulligatawny soup'', which sound Chinese and Indian respectively but are American inventions, and ''Döner'', a German term despite its Turkish sounds (Gerhardt 2013). The more these expressions become famous in the gastronomic world, the more deeply (and wrongly) they are associated with a specific ethnic cuisine: one of the most striking examples is ''Chicken Tikka Masala'', a dish which has nothing to do with Indian cuisine and which has been defined ''a true British national dish'' because actually this expression has been made up by the British (Buettner 2008).
3.5.1 The case of French – the language of haute cuisine
The starting point for the prestige of French language in cuisine must be looked for in the Norman conquest of England in 1066. From a linguistic point of view, this event determined the long-standing cultural association of French with cultural superiority and sophistication. Many are the French culinary loanwords which date back to this period, e.g. 'veal', 'beef', 'pork', 'mutton'; the linguistic contact between French and English continued through the Middle Ages – as is proved by the assimilation into English of French adapted loanwords such as 'bacon', 'grape', 'juice', 'spice', 'sausage', 'juice', 'salad' – up to the present, with a peak of interest from the 18th century onwards. In particular, in this period the rupture of the culinary codes that belonged to the ancién regime and the consequent redefinition of the notion of taste (Frosini 2012) led to the association, at an international level, of French cuisine with premium-quality food (Zwicky, Zwicky 1980), and the same happened to the French language. Since then, the prestige given to French in the culinary domain has always been extremely high, and it seems that there will be no significant changes in the near future. In fact, the majority of the latest loanwords, e.g. 'menu', 'picnic', 'aperitif', 'restaurant' and 'café', refer no more to basic ingredients but to places or new, 'fashionable' culinary practices, a clear indication that the pervasiveness of French in the lexicon of gastronomy is due to the charm which evokes.
The use of French is particularly remarkable in the US in menu writing, a domain in which, as Lakoff (2006) noticed, for much time it has been the only foreign language used and the only one a sophisticated person should have knowledge of, being it considered ''the language of the finest cooking'' (Gerhardt 2013:43). According to Jurafsky (2014), until the 1970's the use of French in menus marked an evident distinction between expensive and modest restaurants, as only the most refined ones inserted such sophisticated expressions. Instead, in the last few decades French started to be used by cheaper restaurants as well, and at present its use is recommended to whatever restaurant which wants to boast its culinary skills. Even restaurants that do not claim to be French frequently make up French-inspired expressions for indicating dishes that, in turn, are not always French (Zwicky, Zwicky 1980). Besides, the fact that some menus, despite being addressed to English speakers, are completely written in French (Zwicky, Zwicky 1980) and that many other present a high degree of ''Frenchification'' demonstrates the use of French as a means to impress the customers and to convey
fascination. Its incredible spread in the linguistics of menus is a phenomenon which is unprecedented and which does not happen with the same intensity with any other language (Zwicky, Zwicky 1980); actually, French seems to be capable of indicating culinary excellence much more than any other (Zwicky, Zwicky 1980). Probably, the traditional opinion according to which French conveys ''elegance, sophistication and femininity'' (Haarmann 1989; Martin 2007), together with lack of long-lasting culinary traditions in the American cuisine, have motivated the restaurateurs to insert French elements in menus in order to make their dishes look more original and refined by means of sophisticated linguistic expressions. Effectively, French expressions seem to be used as markers for giving a distinctive feature to plain, 'unexciting' linguistic definitions, and this tendency reveals a real linguistic obsession for this language. Many terms have become a 'must-know' in the world of haute cuisine and their value is immediately recognised by the customers.
The creative strategies related to the use of French in the linguistics of menus are many. First of all, there are some which affect the formal level and which recall French sounds and spelling, e.g. alliterations, rhymes, diacritic and graphic accents (Zwicky and Zwicky 1980). The use of a single element is sufficient to draw the association with 'Frenchness': not only the insertion of derivative affixes which are stereotypically perceived as being French (Curtin 2007), but also the use of definite articles (la, le, les) and complex prepositions (à la, au, aux) is pretty common. English, differently from French, does not distinguish the grammatical gender, and since in these cases the purpose is to allude to French and not to create expressions which are syntactically and morphologically correct (as the intended customers are unlikely to perfectly know French), the inaccurate use of French gender-defined elements is rather common and accepted in English culinary terminology, e.g. le salade instead of la salade (Zwicky and Zwicky 1980).
Secondly, from a semantic and lexical point of view, reference to French gastronomic terms is remarkable. The highest frequency of French words in American menus concerns the French dishes and recipes which are widely appreciated abroad: meat (e.g. contrefilet, entrecote, escalope, poulet roti, fois gras), soups and sauces (e.g. consommé, veloute, paté,) and desserts (e.g. chantilly, compote, macedoine, milles-feuilles). Many adjectives and past participles are used, too, and mainly refer to the methods of preparation of the dish. For the former, menus
gratin, au naturel; for the latter, the terms fumé, sauté, farci and glacé. As for the use of French adverbial expressions, it is not unusual to observe examples of linguistic resemantisation. In these cases, the original French meaning of expressions is (unconsciously or not) ignored, while the linguistic strings are used to indicate completely different referents. An interesting example is à la mode (Gerhardt 2013): in American English this expression, according to the Oxford Dictionary, indicates both a dessert served with ice cream and meat which is braised in wine, while for the average American customer the original meaning of 'fashionable' is not the first that comes to mind.
Finally, in the US even the internal structure of menus, in restaurants which claim to be refined, is usually defined in French. From the traditional denominations for the courses, which become hors d'œuvre and entrées, also the daily offer (the menu du jour) is frequently indicated in French. Table d’hôte indicates a set of dishes which are charged at a fixed price, while menu à la carte is used when the selection of dishes is free and up to the customer.
3.5.2 The unexpected success of Italian language and cuisine
Also the linguistic contribution of Italian to the terminology of food is long-standing, and the list of Italian culinary expressions which have become international is not short at all. If, as Pinnavaia (2007) observed, from 1425 to 1993 an impressive number of 200 words entered the British English language, in particular the 20th century alone saw the arrival of 108 Italian culinary loanwords. A remarkable number of Italianisms seems to be well-established in North American English, too, where the linguistic influence has been even more dynamic and permeable than in British English (Masiola Rosini 2004). As for the English-speakers world, the conditions which led to the linguistic contact between Italian and English were not always favourable for the acceptance of foreign terms and of the related ethnic cuisine. If in the case of England the opportunity for linguistic influence was offered during the Renaissance period, when Italian language was considered the language of prestige and culture (Pinnavaia 2007), for American English the channels varied from ''emigration, catering, commercialisation and imitation of (Italian) products'' (Marcato 2010:20, my translation).
Particularly, as for American English, the contribution given by Italian emigration has been remarkable. The 'journeys of hope', which were made by the Italians who wanted to escape from poverty and unemployment in their homeland, had a peak of departures from 1880 to
1924 and from 1945 to 1976 (Varisco 2013), and these massive flows of immigration into the United States have been responsible for large and settled Italian communities, which kept alive the traditions, including the culinary ones. For immigrants, in fact, preparing traditional recipes was probably a means to show and to maintain their ethnic identity (Ortoleva 1992), a fact which is likely to have promoted the spread of Italian recipes and of Italian terminology in the US. Until the second half of the 20th century, Italian cuisine was given a negative connotation of social inferiority because of its strong ethnicity (Gabaccia 1998), which is one of the reasons why it was assimilated into the American psyche with difficulty. However, a reversal in this trend of social acceptance began when Italy became an industrial power: Italian cuisine lost its connotation of poverty and was seen as socially superior and more sophisticated. Present data now show an unprecedented passion for Italian food, which is considered to be top quality cuisine and which even led to the creation of new dishes which are Italian only in name, such as the renowned Fettuccine Alfredo and Spaghetti with meatballs. The reaction of American customers about the impressive presence of Italian dishes in restaurants is absolutely positive. Girardelli (2004) reports the results of a survey carried out in 1996 for the National Restaurant Association, which showed that the presence of customers in Italian restaurants in the US has almost doubled from the 1990's, and this trend is not expected to decrease at all. The strengths of the attractiveness of Italian cuisine – which has become almost mythical in today’s culinary world – seem to lie in its healthy Mediterranean origin, a good price/quantity ratio, the use of fresh seasonal ingredients and olive oil and the methods of cooking, all features which are surprisingly capable of conveying a sensation of rusticity and authenticity (Marcato 2010, Girardelli 2004).
As for the linguistic dimension, after more than a century of intensive contact the variety of Italian words in the American terminology for food is huge. Since the first attestations in American English, which date back to the end of the 18th century, e.g. broccoli (1792) and macaroni (1802) (Marcato 1996), at present expressions such as espresso, cappuccino, pasta, spaghetti, pizza, lasagne and tiramisù (Lanzilotta 2014; Girardelli 2004; Marcato 2010) have entered the English lexicon and are some of the Italianisms which are more representative of the 'Made in Italy' brand.
