Pragmatics and the Aesthetics of Food Discourse: Jamie’s Italy

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pragmatic and aesthetic dimensions of Jamie’s Italy (2005), a ‘hybrid’ cookery book, authored by British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, which actually collects and blends various genres by incorporating Italian recipes, professional photographs and personal commentaries. In particular, I will consider how such dimensions envisage the concepts of authenticity and identity, and their stylistic renditions operating in English-language food discourse. In constructing and reinforcing the prototypical (British) schema of authentic Italian foodscape by means of various semiotic resources and paratextual features (Eggins 2004, Stockwell 2002), the author’s language choices also reflect and negotiate the representations of identity in the contemporary world (Perianova 2010). In pragmatic terms, authenticity is a keyword in food discourse as it projects a sense of realism and accuracy by referring to specific traditions and contexts. By analysing a selection of passages, my paper will specifically discuss the following issues: 1) the pragmatic present-day notion of authenticity, and its complexities and possible transformations in food discourse; 2) the strategies used in Jamie’s Italy for the aesthetic, linguistic and textual depiction of traditional Italian food; 3) the construction of an ideological and stereotypical (e.g. romanticised) perspective of Italian cuisine, and by extension of the entire country.