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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 30:4 (2020) ► pp.532–556

Dimensions of recipe register and native speaker knowledge

Observations from a writing experiment

| Old Dominion University
| University of Colorado Boulder

This study investigates native Japanese speakers’ context-dependent linguistic knowledge of cooking recipes. Recipes are a typical example of a register, defined as the use of language in a particular social situation for a specific purpose. Thirty participants in the present study were asked to write a recipe for curry rice (a popular dish in Japan) or an unnamed soup (shown in a photo) on a blank piece of paper without access to any resources. Most participants’ texts contained specialized vocabulary and basic procedural organization. On the other hand, few integrated the typical grammatical features of commercial recipes. It suggests that the latter details are not part of the communicative repertoires of most participants. The grammatical characteristics of commercial recipes are likely a product of careful editing, aimed for clarity and consistency. Professional editing appears to have a significant role in shaping the grammar of the written register.

Keywords: communicative repertoire, context-dependent linguistic knowledge, recipe register, professional editing, user-generated content, Japanese recipes, writing experiment
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Recipe register
    • 2.1Organization
    • 2.2Vocabulary
    • 2.3Grammar
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Organization
    • 4.2Vocabulary
    • 4.3Grammar
    • 4.4Summary
  • 5.Role of professional editing in recipe grammar
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 18 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18053.kan
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