Post 3

P3: Read Freedman and Jurafsky. Explain the connections you see them making between food, language, and culture. What do you find most interesting in their analysis of potato chip advertising? Beyond potato chips, where else can you imagine applying their method of food advertising analysis and what do you think you’d find?

            The connections that Freedman and Jurafsky make between food, language and culture are that the vocabulary and metaphors that are used to advertise food are related to the target audience. The manner in which text is used in advertisement has a lot to say about different classes and represent a variety of class identities. In particular, Freedman and Jurafsky have done some research on how factors such as education and health affect how advertisements are used to attract people across socioeconomic statuses.

            One of the most interesting things that I found in the Freedman and Jurafsky’s analysis of potato chips was how authenticity was defined for expensive versus inexpensive chips. It was interesting to hear that for the expensive chips, naturalness and emphasis on ingredients were mentioned to try and construct a sense of authenticity. On the other hand, inexpensive potato chips mentioned more often stories of its history and locality. The differences that are seen between how these two types of potato chips are advertised says a lot about the people that buy these chips. The manner in which language is used in advertisements contains a lot of information about the values that people hold dear. For instance, I came to learn that the reason that expensive chips tend to have more descriptions about being natural and contain fresh ingredients is because the upper class tends to cherish and care about things that are natural and nonartificial. For the lower/working class history and family tradition are values that are important to them and thus create as sense of authenticity for them. Thus the main issue here is authenticity and how our own personal values affect how we live our live, from something as big as choosing our career paths to something as small as choosing what potato chips we want to eat.

            Based on their method of food advertisement analysis, another type of food that I think would display similar results would be cereal. In any supermarket there are always a variety of cereal to choose from and many of them try to attract different people. The main groups I can see are adults and children. Children’s cereal is always more colorful and vibrant and always talk about having a great taste while the “adult” cereal always talks about having certain vitamins or more fiber and appeal to being part of a healthier breakfast/meal. These types of differences are all around us, and goes to show just how important language is in advertisement as well having significance in social distinctions.