Food and Language. A Multimodal Analysis of Australian and Italian Vegan Food Bloggers.

Abstract

The present study investigates the relationship between food and language and, in particular, the language of vegan food blogs. Six popular vegan food blogs have been selected and analysed in order to understand how this specific kind of blogs fall into the genre of computer-mediated communication, comparing them to results from previous studies on food blogs, and how the vegan bloggers present themselves to the public, what kind of online persona they want to create and what kind of relationship they want to build with the users coming across their blogs. Australian and Italian blogs were selected and compared for the purpose of understanding whether variations in communication modes are present between the two languages and cultures. The blogs were analysed using multimodal tools of investigation to describe them in terms of visual analysis and critical discourse analysis. As the sections of the blogs analysed only contain a one-way type of communication, the Instagram profiles of the bloggers were then analysed to investigate the interaction between the blogger and their followers. The comments sections of the Instagram posts were analysed and compared to the comment sections of the recipes present in the blogs. The visual organization and aesthetic aspect of the vegan blogs appears consistent with the results found in previous studies on blogs, with the only relevant difference regarding the choice of colour, as vegan bloggers have the tendency to use colour as an indication of the vegan lifestyle. From the critical discourse analysis of the about pages it emerges that the vegan bloggers tend to present themselves as expert figures in the field, but at the same time, to a different extent depending on the blogger, trying to appear friendly and affable. The analysis of the comment sections highlighted this constant crossing of the expert-non expert border. No relevant differences were found between the two languages and cultures.