A note on the meanings of junk food
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Marcel Danesi
Abstract
Junk food is an anomaly when it comes to historical traditions of cuisine. It emerges in the context of youth culture in America in the model part of the twentieth century but soon morphs into a type of food eaten by people of any age. This transformation of its meaning is part of a symptomatology inherent in consumerist cultures, whereby objects of any kind (including food) are produced quickly, cheaply, and faddishly, reflecting a discontinuity with historical traditions. The semiotic analysis of fast food corroborates Barthes’s critique of consumerism as a culture of commodification and it also points out the power of socioeconomic forces to transform historical meaning structures.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- The Umberto Eco gaze
- “La morte non avrà signoria”: Domande per Umberto Eco
- Vistas for organized global semiotics
- Semiotics of food
- Introduction: Semiotics of food
- Food and translation
- The translation of food in literature: A culinary journey through time and genres
- Semiosis of intercultural cooking: The nineteenth century travel literature as a case study
- The semiotics of migrants’ food: Between codes and experience
- Lost in translation: Food, identity and otherness
- Glocal and food: On alimentary translation
- Contemporary foodspheres
- A note on the meanings of junk food
- Are nutrients also good to think?
- Critique of the culinary reason
- Food and taste
- Food meaning: From tasty to flavorful
- L’esthésique et l’épiphanique: Traces figuratives de la saveur
- Taste and meaning
- Cooking and eating
- The culinary and social-semiotic meaning of food: Spicy meals and their significance in Mexico, Italy, and Texas
- Semiotic food, semiotic cooking: The ritual of preparation and consumption of hallacas in Venezuela
- Food and communication
- Myths, traditions, and rituals of food in Spanish cinema
- Starred cosmopolitanism: Celebrity chefs, documentaries, and the circulation of global desire
- Food design chez Bras
- Food design: Symbols of our daily nutrition
- Food-ography: Food and new media
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- The Umberto Eco gaze
- “La morte non avrà signoria”: Domande per Umberto Eco
- Vistas for organized global semiotics
- Semiotics of food
- Introduction: Semiotics of food
- Food and translation
- The translation of food in literature: A culinary journey through time and genres
- Semiosis of intercultural cooking: The nineteenth century travel literature as a case study
- The semiotics of migrants’ food: Between codes and experience
- Lost in translation: Food, identity and otherness
- Glocal and food: On alimentary translation
- Contemporary foodspheres
- A note on the meanings of junk food
- Are nutrients also good to think?
- Critique of the culinary reason
- Food and taste
- Food meaning: From tasty to flavorful
- L’esthésique et l’épiphanique: Traces figuratives de la saveur
- Taste and meaning
- Cooking and eating
- The culinary and social-semiotic meaning of food: Spicy meals and their significance in Mexico, Italy, and Texas
- Semiotic food, semiotic cooking: The ritual of preparation and consumption of hallacas in Venezuela
- Food and communication
- Myths, traditions, and rituals of food in Spanish cinema
- Starred cosmopolitanism: Celebrity chefs, documentaries, and the circulation of global desire
- Food design chez Bras
- Food design: Symbols of our daily nutrition
- Food-ography: Food and new media
