Unit 1 - P3

P3: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?

Freedman and Jurafsky first identify food, language, and culture as "markers" of group identity. They then talk about how, in order to accomodate to an audience or a target group, we have to alter things in our presentation such as dropping the g in gerunds to appeal to the working class. They argue that, for food advertising, it is no different since they have broader audiences. Culture, in advertisement, is targetted in advertisement by cherry picking who the audience is and formulating language in food advertisements to appeal to that culture. This is the union between the three topics.

I think what's interesting about their analysis of potato chip advertising is their whole process of isolating just the language. They knew prior that potato chips were eaten by all social classes, so they were cleverly able to analyze the subtle differences in the language itself on the advertisement.

I like how they defined the "educational" complexity component by using a Flesch-Kindcaid readability metric test. It is very interesting that producers will go out of their way to use longer sentences and longer words to appear more educated and appeal to higher classes because I would think that complexity, in general, would make it a deterrant to buying any product.

I thought the topic of "negative" markers was very interesting; they emphasize through negative words like "don't" in their advertising to show that their product does not have that bad quality, and the article also states that because of the use of the negative marker, the bad quality is assumed to be in other brands. It is a very sneaky use of nuanced language.

Beyond potato chips, I could use this method of food advertising analysis with fruits and vegetables. There is this constant second-guessing now that "organic" produce has become more mainstream to the public. To draw a parallel between the potato chip analysis, an "expensive" brand might emphasize how tropical or how far the fruit has gone (distinction) in order to get to the supermarket. With the idea of health in advertising, they could talk about the organics and how it lacks herbicides and pesticides.