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Part of
Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies
Edited by Monika Reif and Frank Polzenhagen
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 103] 2023
► pp. 127–145

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese

| Indiana University - Bloomington
This chapter provides a semantic analysis of Japanese cooking verbs in comparison with English counterparts. It will be shown that some of the semantic components that are lexicalized (or incorporated) to form a verb’s meaning reflects a cultural conceptualization of food preparation. Building upon Lehrer’s (1972) analysis of Japanese cooking verbs but further revising it, the chapter will showcase relevant aspects of a culturally constructed conceptualization of food preparation reflected in the Japanese language. Interestingly, a comparison between Japanese and English appears to show a relatively meager inventory of cooking verbs in Japanese. However, while Japanese may have a more limited number of cooking verbs in which semantic components are lexicalized, the language makes available other linguistic means such as use of mimetics and compounding that detail the cooking process. These additional mechanisms help maintain the broad range of fine-grained descriptions pertinent to the cooking process, while simultaneously preserving a culturally constructed conceptualization of food preparation.
Keywords: componential analysis, compounds, cooking verbs, cultural conceptualization, Japanese, lexicalization, mimetics, semantic field
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Analysis of cooking verbs in Japanese
    • 2.1Componential analysis
    • 2.2Revised lexical organization of Japanese cooking verbs
  • 3.Cultural conceptualization and linguistic tools
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.05tsu
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Tsujimura, Natsuko
2022. Chapter 1. The language of food in Japanese through a linguistic lens. In The Language of Food in Japanese [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 25], ► pp. 28 ff. DOI logo

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