Alimentation: A General Semiotic Model of Socialising Food

Abstract

Food consumption is one of the primary needs of the human animal, as central to our existence as, for example, sleep, sex, and the elimination of digestive waste. In most human societies, however, these last needs are met in a condition of more or less formalised and compulsory intimacy, while eating is treated as a social event, which reaches its full satisfaction in a public environment. This public dimension requires the overcoming of numerous difficulties, from the link between food and the killing of animals to injustice in food distribution, to the “natural” and thus potentially offensive character of food ingestion. To overcome all these problems, the act of food consumption must be “civilized”. This happens in different ways. First, there is the preparation of foods, which are rarely left in their natural state. Food processing usually goes beyond the pure needs of conservation or taste, turning edible matter into “dishes”. Second, there is the choice of times, places, gatherings that transform food consumption into an occasion. Then there is the ordering of eating, its serialisation according to a syntagmatic axis (succession) and a paradigmatic one (choice) that often is arranged in advance by those who prepare food, but actualised by those who consume it. This ordering attributes the semiotic character of a text to food. But this textualisation is enhanced by the presence of paratextual elements that envelop and further “civilize” the act of eating. These are very different linguistic inserts (for example prayers, blessings, conversations, toasts, performed in particular moments by specific subjects), but also gestural and performative rules obliging both those who serve and who consume food, which are specified in real grammars of eating (etiquette, good manners, etc.). From these prescriptions derives also the necessity of particular devices supporting the activities of food consumption (plates, cutlery, napkins, etc.). All this gives food consumption a ceremonial aspect that makes it the object of study for anthropologists, sociologists, scholars of religions, but above all semiotics, because the stakes of all this “superfluous” activity with respect to simple eating is the social meaning of food. This chapter illustrates the theoretical categories of this semiotic ceremonial approach and analyses some relevant examples.