I recently stubled upon this book and while it’s not one we are stocking here at English Central, I thought I w0uld would share it because it is the kind of book that most English Language Teachers will appreciate. Here are some fascinating tidbits:
- as far as restaurant menus go, every increase of a letter in the average length of words used to describe a dish represents a 69 cent increase in the cost of the dish. Also, for each positive but vague word like “tasty” that is used, the dish is typically 8 cents cheaper.
- at one point, toasted bread was involved when people drank and made toasts
I haven’t read the book yet – it is now officially on my Christmas wish-list. However, I did find Dan Jurafsky’s blog, which has all sorts of fascinating posts on the language of food. I just read about the different marketing language used on bags of expensive potato chips versus the language used on cheap chips. Think about what the differences might be, then read the post.
Undoubtedly because I used to specialize in teaching pronunciation, I found the post prior to the potato chip one equally fascinating. In a discussion of ice cream flavours, Jurafsky touches on “sound symbolism” and words (in many languages, not just English) with front vowels (i, I and e) tend to suggest thin, light and small things. On the other hands, words with back vowels tend to sugegst large, thick or heavy things. Compare “teeny” to “huge” in English, “petit” to “grand” in French or “chico” to “gordo” in Spanish.
I love it when someone makes you consider things that you always lived with but never thought to consider before!