Well-wishing practices in Greek and English food blogs

1 Introduction

Most studies on digital communication focus on impoliteness, a behaviour that is commonly observed in online interactions (see, e.g., Antoci et al. 2019). The present paper shifts the focus to politeness aiming to explore well-wishing practices in Greek and English food blogs. This exploration may also contribute to a more nuanced understanding of food blogging, a field that has so far received limited scholarly attention (Mainolfi et al. 2022: 431).

Food blogging is defined as “the practice of publishing food-related posts on a blog” (Lee et al. 2014: 228). Food bloggers post their food and cooking practices as a way of sharing their ideas and expertise with blog visitors. The latter may respond by posting comments in which they usually evaluate the posted recipes (Diemer and Frobenius 2013; Tzanne 2022). While such responses are expected to include positive evaluation, e.g., praise and compliments, well-wishing remarks might not be anticipated to appear frequently.

Such remarks fall under Searle’s (1969) category of “expressives” which are understood as speech acts that convey feelings and emotions. They are acts which reflect “social and interpersonal relations”, often influenced by politeness considerations (Taavitsainen and Jucker 2010: 159). According to Dumitrescu (2006: 24), wishes function not only as polite speech acts, but also as powerful indicators of solidarity among members of communities who share common cultural values.

Purporting to further the study of wishes in online communication, and at the same time to contribute to the comparative analysis of the phenomenon, the present study intends to explore the forms and functions of wishes in the digital environment of Greek and English food blogs. To pursue our aims, we have collected posts and comments from Greek and English food blogs where bloggers are female, non-professional cooks, consistently engaging with their audiences by uploading recipes, commenting and responding to posters’ comments. Our dataset consists of comments from three English and three Greek food blogs.

The theoretical framework employed for the analysis of our data is that of relational work, i.e., the discursive approach to politeness proposed by Watts (2003) and Locher and Watts (2005). The value of this approach lies in its focus on interactants’ perceptions and evaluations of im/politeness, highlighting how speakers co-construct im/politeness and manage social relationships through language. It examines im/politeness as a range of evaluations (from politic and polite to conflictual), and includes behaviour that is neither polite nor impolite but simply appropriate (politic) for a given context. Brown and Levinson’s (1987 [1978]) positive politeness strategies are used to interpret instances of relational work that aim to build rapport and express solidarity (Locher and Watts 2005: 10).

The paper is organised as follows. The following section (Section 2) provides a fleeting sketch of the vast area of blogging, especially food blogging, and a brief overview of relevant theoretical issues relating to politeness and well-wishing. The methodology and the data used in this study are described in Section 3, and the findings of the study are presented in Section 4. Section 5 discusses the findings in terms of the type of relational work performed, and offers some concluding remarks.

2 Background

3 Data collection and procedure of analysis

Having explored aspects of wishes in Greek food blogs in previous studies (Tzanne 2022; Tzanne and Sifianou 2024), we here embark on a comparative study of wishing practices in Greek and English food blogs with the aim to enrich knowledge on such practices beyond the Greek context.

As mentioned earlier, the Greek and English food blogs we examined are run by females who could be characterised as “amateur cooks on the Web”. More specifically, these bloggers are not related to cooking professionally in any way, that is, they are not chefs, cookbook writers or restaurant owners, nor are they widely known through some television or YouTube cooking show. They are simply people who have found a space to talk about food, their common interest, and exchange their culinary views and knowledge. The reason why we limited our data to comments from these people’s blogs stems from our contention that comments on recipes by well-known professional chefs may be “polluted” by commenters’ admiration for these public personae. To ensure that the gender would not be a confounding variable, we selected female bloggers, which was not difficult. However, it should be noted that we could not consider the commenters’ gender, as the majority use monikers (e.g., “spoon stories”, “fabfood4all”), making it impossible to determine either their biological sex or how they may identify themselves (e.g., as transgender).

Setting out to locate well-wishing remarks in English food blogs, we soon realised that this was going to be a very difficult task in the sense that wishes seem to be extremely rare in English food blogs. To deal with this, we decided to collect data from the festive period of Christmas and New Year’s Day, that is, that time of the year when it is highly likely for people to exchange wishes. To this end, we compiled a dataset comprising 2,997 comments under 95 recipes that were uploaded on three English food blogs, and 1,027 comments under 83 recipes that were uploaded on three Greek food blogs, between 1 December and 5 January of the last 14 years, as 2010 is the earliest date when all six blogs were in operation. For the blogs that are organised on the basis of monthly archives, collecting December and January data was a straightforward procedure. On the other hand, for the blogs that did not have monthly archives of recipes, we relied on the category of recipes called “Christmas recipes”, but again, we included only the recipes that were uploaded in December and beginning of January (and excluded those “Christmas recipes” that were uploaded in, for example, October or November). Finally, we should note that comments under December and beginning-of-January recipes that were posted in other months of the year are also included in our dataset, as we thought that this would add variety to the wishes offered (if any).

In order to identify well-wishing remarks in our corpus, we read all posts and comments carefully and collected those comments that contained utterances functioning as wishes. We found 237 comments including wishes in the three English food blogs and 643 comments including wishes in the three Greek food blogs. This confirms our initial observation that wishes are not common in related English data. A similar observation was made by Ogiermann and Bella (2021), who found that wishes were absent from their English data (signs announcing holiday-related closures), whereas they did feature on similar Greek data.

As can be seen in Table 1, the difference between the two datasets is striking, with an average of 62.60 % of Greek comments involving wishes and only 7.90 % of English comments doing the same.

Given that frequency of occurrence is not among the aims of our study, we would like to simply note here that this striking difference could indicate a tendency on the part of Greek people to use the specific positive politeness strategy probably for the positively marked relational work it enables them to perform.

Before proceeding, let us clarify that we take our unit of analysis (a wish) to be a coherent utterance with the function of well-wishing, marked with a capital letter at the beginning and a punctuation mark (usually an exclamation mark to convey the commenter’s emotional involvement) at the end. For example, we take the utterance Εύχομαι καλή χρονιά με υγεία και πολλές χαρούμενες στιγμές!!!! (‘I wish [you] a good year with health and many joyful moments!!!!’) to be a single wish. On the basis of this unit of analysis, we identified 254 wishes in the English food blogs and 807 wishes in the Greek ones.

After identifying wishes in both datasets, we proceeded with establishing a number of categories for analysis and with coding the data. The data was analysed on the basis of seven categories: (1) triggering theme/event, (2) type/category of wish (situational, interactional or mixed), (3) producer of wish (blogger or commenter), (4) recipient of wish (blogger or commenter), (5) position of wish in the comment (e.g., initial, final), (6) presence or absence of response to wish and (7) originality. The identified wishes were then codified accordingly in Excel form by both authors, which facilitated both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data through various searches and sortings. Any discrepancies in categorisation were discussed by the authors and disagreements were resolved. Due to space limitations, only three categories (triggering theme, type of wish and originality) are discussed in this paper.

Let us note at this point that research on online communication is fraught with complexities concerning ethics. As many have argued (see, e.g., Georgakopoulou 2017; Pihlaja 2016; Scott 2022) just because online language data is freely available does not mean that researchers can use it in any way they like. As regards food blogs, they allow for posters’ anonymity and typically do not include sensitive personal information. For our study, we have used data from blogs that are not password protected and, as we do not focus on complete posts, but on a specific speech event, that of wishing, we assume that our reproduction of related examples is of minimum risk. Nevertheless, we have used pseudonyms for all participants, including both bloggers and commenters, and disguised other types of information such as place names.

4 Data analysis and findings

The presentation of our findings is organised in response to the first two main aims of our study which are to examine (i) the triggering events and categories of wishes in Greek and English food blogs and (ii) the form of these wishes in terms of conventionality or originality. These findings will then be discussed in Section 5 in relation to our third main aim, which is to examine the type of relational work these wishes perform and the ensuing interpersonal relationships constructed among interactants. Let us note here that, although the ensuing analysis concerns primarily the wishes made during the festive period mentioned earlier, it is hoped that it also offers insights into the forms and functions of wishes in general.

5 Discussion and concluding remarks

Based on the way wishes have been received in the two datasets, we would like to begin our discussion with a general observation, namely that wishes, acts theoretically linked to politeness (see Section 2), have been treated as appropriate and considerate acts by all interactants involved, as nowhere in the corpus are there indications of participants perceiving them as inappropriate or negative. In terms of the discursive approach to politeness adopted in this study, this shows that wishes are instances of positively marked relational work that could be politic or polite in nature. In this section, we bring together the various categories and forms of Greek and English food blog wishes and their frequency of occurrence (see Table 3), in order to arrive at an interpretation of the type of relational work (politic or polite) interactants perform.

Studying relational work in a specific communicative environment is by no means an easy task. Politic work is interwoven with the notion of appropriateness and mere adequacy and that requires specific criteria that would emanate from the environment examined. Moreover, in order to identify polite relational work in the data with a fair amount of certainty, it may be necessary to establish politic work in the specific setting first, since, according to the approach to politeness we adopt in this study, polite behaviour is behaviour that goes beyond what is expected and merely adequate for the occasion (i.e., politic behaviour).

With these in mind, we set out to identify the types of relational work, polite or politic, that wishes perform in the digital context of food blogs on the basis of criteria that revolve around relevance to situation/topic, and the amount of effort interactants invest when engaging in well-wishing practices. In more specific terms, we expect to find politic behaviour when there is a high frequency of occurrence of wishes that are expected in relation to the social situation (festive period) and/or the topic of the blogs examined (food, cooking, enjoying a dish). Another indication of politic behaviour could be the amount of effort that seems to have been invested in the wish. In this sense, conventional and formulaic wishes which involve minimum effort and are simply adequate and appropriate for the specific context can be viewed as indicative of politic behaviour. On the other hand, the high frequency of wishes that concern issues that lie outside the specific social situation (festive season) and concern interpersonal matters, may lead to the identification of polite relational work. Moreover, creative wishes whose form departs from conventions and formulae indicate that additional effort has been expended in their expression and suggest, again, the performance of polite relational work.

For instance, in the festive season, especially near Christmas Day or New Year’s Day, one is expected to offer wishes such as “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year”, respectively. This type of behaviour can be identified as politic relational work, the type that is well expected and merely appropriate for the specific context (Locher 2004; Locher and Watts 2005). Furthermore, there may be wishes that relate to topics not directly relevant to the social situation at hand, but essential for cultivating positive relationships among the interactants and ensuring that a positive atmosphere prevails in the encounter (e.g., Να ’σαι καλά ‘May you be well’). Such behaviour can be characterised as polite relational work, the type of behaviour that involves increased consideration for others, leading to the creation and cultivation of an atmosphere of closeness, intimacy and solidarity.

Concerning the occurrence of situational wishes, we observe high frequencies in both datasets, with the vast majority of wishes falling into this category. As such wishes are mostly concerned with Christmas, the New Year and the festive season in general, the high frequencies are most probably related to the festive season being upmost in people’s minds. In other words, these frequencies are well expected in terms of the time of the year when the wishes examined are posted. Producing that which is expected, appropriate and adequate for the occasion indicates, in our view, the performance of politic relational work by both Greek and English food blog participants.

Viewed in more detail, situational wishes constitute the vast majority in the English dataset (78.74 %), and almost all of them (97 %) concern the festive season. This suggests a stronger tendency within the English dataset to engage in politic relational work than that within the Greek dataset where respective percentages are noticeably lower (only 53.40 % are situational wishes, of which 61.71 % concern the festive season). Furthermore, the frequency of mirror responses to festive wishes in the English dataset (34 %), which is almost three times as high as the respective percentage in the Greek data (12 %), provides further evidence of a tendency for English wishers to offer conventional wishes that are just adequate for the occasion, and, thus, to engage in politic relational work.

As far as interactional wishes are concerned, Table 3 shows that the percentage of such wishes in the Greek dataset is slightly higher (19.45 %) than its English counterpart (15.35 %). An examination of the themes of Greek and English interactional wishes suggests the need to differentiate between topic-related (food, cooking) and topic-unrelated wishes (well-being, etc.), as the two datasets present interesting differences in the frequency of occurrence of these themes. In particular, the very low percentage of Greek wishes relating to food, which is odd at first sight, given the communicative context examined (food blogs), gives rise to the need to differentiate between topic-related and topic-unrelated wishes in order to study the issue in more depth. This differentiation offers a clearer view of the practices adopted within the Greek and English datasets. More specifically, the difference between the two datasets is that, while most Greek interactional wishes (78.98 %) are unrelated to the topic of food blogs, the overwhelming majority of English interactional wishes (82.05 %) concerns cooking and/or enjoying a dish (see Section 4.1.2). Thus, even when engaging in interpersonal work, the English remain focused on the topic of the blog, whereas Greek wishers appear to attempt to bring themselves closer to their addressees and cultivate in-groupness by showing concern for the health and well-being of other commenters. Indeed, the frequent expression of wishes on the theme of “well-being” suggests Greek people’s interest in interpersonal relationships in communication. In our view, this indicates the performance of polite relational work, as, in such cases, Greek people go beyond what is expected and enhance the positive face of all participants in the encounter by expressing concern for the well-being of others. This could be seen as an indication of Greek wishers’ tendency to engage in polite work more frequently than English wishers in the context of food blogs.

In such cases, Greek people seem to prioritise others’ well-being over the successful execution of a recipe or the consumption of a dish, and view food blogging as an opportunity for socialisation and cultivation of in-groupness and solidarity, hence the performance of polite relational work. By contrast, with their many topic-related interactional wishes (three times as many as their Greek counterparts) concerning cooking and enjoying a dish, English people stay focused on the content and main topic of the blog and offer wishes that are non-salient but merely appropriate for the specific context. In this sense, English people can be viewed as engaging in politic relational work.

Mixed wishes, the category our study has added to the already established ones in the literature, are rather scarce in the English dataset (5.90 %), but almost five times more frequent in the Greek dataset (27.13 %). The frequent expression of mixed wishes in the Greek data suggests that, when a wish for specific social circumstances is in order, Greek bloggers and commenters tend not to limit themselves to what is strictly adequate and appropriate for the social situation at hand. Instead, they go beyond what is conventionally expected and enhance the situational wish with elements indicating their interest in interpersonal relationships; this is in line with the attested tendency of Greek interactants for positively marked relational work in the specific digital context (Tzanne 2022).

Concerning the degree of originality in Greek and English wishes, both sets exhibit high frequencies in the occurrence of conventional wishes, with the English data displaying the highest (see Section 4.2). From a closer analysis of the data, it becomes clear that, when offering wishes relevant to the festive season, English food blog participants resort almost exclusively (93 %) to formulaic conventional wishes that can be viewed as “part of the politic behaviour expected in the social situation” (Watts 2003: 156). This may suggest that, to them, exchanging season greetings is a highly routinised and conventionalised activity, in which they engage by making the minimal effort required, much like performing a social obligation. The great number of formulaic, conventional wishes and the small percentage of creative wishes in the English corpus may indicate that English food blog participants resort to ready-made solutions and invest little effort in expressing wishes. This may, in turn, lead to the conclusion that, for them, festive wishes are politic relational work.

At this point, we could suggest that routine, conventionalised wishes are examples of politic behaviour (see Watts 2003: 156) rather than positively marked relational work, which is the case with enhanced conventional and creative wishes (see Section 4.2). This is in accord with Brown and Levinson (1987: 93) general observation that the additional effort the speaker expends in producing elaborate utterances may be perceived as communicating their sincere desire to show care for their addressee. The authors (1987: 94) conclude that “[s]uch expenditures of effort seem to be intimately linked to polite usages across many cultures”.

As stated earlier, in the Greek dataset, the percentage of conventional wishes is lower than that of the English dataset. On the other hand, Greek people are often (14.25 %) found to offer novel and creative wishes, wishes that vary, to a lesser or greater extent, from the wishes that have appeared up to that point in the blog. This comes into sharp contrast with the English data, where creative wishes appear less frequently than their Greek counterparts (5.90 %). Overall, the frequency of occurrence of the total of enhanced and creative wishes is noticeably higher in the Greek dataset (20.19 %) than in the English one (12.98 %). This shows a stronger tendency on the part of Greek food blog participants to engage in polite work (in the sense of Watts 2003). by investing additional effort to surpass the expression of a conventional wish. Based on the above, we would like to argue that, in the specific context, Greek people exhibit a strong tendency to perform polite relational work when exchanging well-wishing remarks. A possible explanation for our findings relates to the preference of Greek people for positive politeness strategies (see, e.g., Makri-Tsilipakou 2001; Pavlidou 1994; Sifianou 1992; Tzanne 2001).

On the whole, we contend that enhanced conventional and creative wishes are highly likely to contribute to the construction of a caring and likeable identity and the co-construction of bonding and in-group identity, that is, the sense of belonging to a group with shared values. Thus, our findings have implications not only for the type of relational work performed each time, but also for the discursive identity Greek and English bloggers and commenters construct. In particular, by engaging in the well-wishing practices discussed above, we could reasonably argue that Greek food bloggers and commenters attempt to construct the identity of in-group (see also Tzanne 2019, 2022) and create and maintain relationships of closeness, camaraderie and solidarity. This could be seen as corroborating evidence for the fact that food blogs do constitute a distinct community of practice. More broadly, Greek interactants are united by their shared interest in food, but simultaneously seem to construe food blogs as occasions for establishing rapport and in-group relationships in the encounter. On the other hand, while also united by their common interest in food, English food blog participants seem to cultivate less intimate relationships that are characterised by formality and distance, as they have been found to express most of their wishes in a rather formulaic way that is simply the expected and appropriate one for the circumstances. Certainly, more research is needed to corroborate this preliminary interpretation of the identity Greek and English food blog participants construct based on other discourse aspects of food blogs, such as (self-)praise or other (than wishes) politeness strategies. Possibilities for further research might also include the comparison of comments from amateur blogs with those uploaded on professional blogs. It would also be interesting to study the forms and functions of wishes offered by Greek and English food blog participants outside the festive period examined in the present paper. Another interesting direction for prospective research could be the exploration of politeness issues in comments uploaded on food blogs in other (than Greek or English) languages.