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Part of
Pragmatics and Translation
Edited by Miriam A. Locher, Daria Dayter and Thomas C. Messerli
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 337] 2023
► pp. 306–325

Chapter 13
“So my job is translating from professional cook to home cook”

Cookbook writers talk recipes on “Food to Words” podcast

| Howard University

This chapter explores how three cookbook writers talk about crafting “the verbal ingredients of a well-written recipe” as well as of themselves as translators of cooking actions and expertise. The analysis shows how in their metalinguistic comments the writers articulate pragmatic rules, including the canonical Gricean Maxims of providing enough information without overwhelming the reader and being honest and clear in their instructions. It also shows how in the process of translating expertise, these wordsmiths address the familiar and the prescriptive and in so doing deconstruct ‘the amnesia of the genesis’ (Bourdieu 1977, 1990) and challenge the existing language practices of recipe writing. This study contributes to our understanding of translation as going beyond interlingual transfer of meaning by considering actions and multisensory experiences.

Keywords: intersemiotic translation, resemiotization, metalinguistic and metapragmatic comments, recipe, wordsmithing, language and action
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Intersemiotic translation as transmutation and transduction of the form and meaning
    • 2.2Recipes, expertise, and wordsmithing
    • 2.3The “meta” of the recipe: Metalinguistic and metapragmatic aspects of recipe writing
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Words and actions: Translating cooking into recipes
    • 4.2The job of “translating from professional cook, trained cook to home cook”
    • 4.3Cooking with Gricean Maxims: The metapragmatic awareness of recipe writers
    • 4.4Recipe writers as authors and principals
      and the “original action animators”
    • 4.5Navigating between the prescriptive and the innovative in recipe writing
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.337.13tov
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