Trayectorias discursivas: la alimentación entre ciencia y comunicación

Public institutions, governmental agencies, health providers, marketing operators, media companies, and various other public and private actors interact constitutively in the negotiation of food meanings and practices: as Roland Barthes (1961) effectively pointed out, food is “not only a collection of products that can be used for statistical or nutritional studies[, but] also, and at the same time, a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behaviors” (Engl. Transl. 1997, 21). Thus, if on the one hand, natural and nutritional sciences undoubtedly play a crucial role in the description, comprehension, and regulation of the material dimension of food — e.g. by revealing its composition and basic constituents, as well as the processes of transformations or decay that can affect it, thus also illustrating its possible effects on our body and health —, on the other hand, one cannot avoid considering the processes of signification and valorisation brought about by the discursive strategies adopted for communicating food, either in the political, journalistic, regulatory or even scientific domain. Drawing on these premises, we intend to analyse the largely debated issue of GMOs use in food, as opposed to organic farming and other so-called “natural” methods for the production of food products. To this purpose, we will analyse, through a semiotic approach, and problematize the institutional descriptions of such issues and their regulations, also focusing on a series of relevant discourses — mainly related to online journalism and social networks — that invest them with particular meanings and values.