Dinner is ready! Studying the dynamics and semiotics of dinner

Yair Neuman; Norbert Marwan; Daniel M. Unger

doi:10.1515/sem-2014-0039

Article

Dinner is ready! Studying the dynamics and semiotics of dinner

Yair Neuman
Yair Neuman (b. 1968) is a department chair at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 〈yneuman@bgu.ac.il〉. His research interests include semiotics, psychology, cultural psychology, and natural language processing. His publications include Reviving the Living: Meaning making in living systems (2008); “Automatic identification of themes in small group dynamics through the analysis of network motifs” (with D. Assaf & Y. Cohen, 2012); and “How language enables abstraction: A case study in computational cultural psychology” (with P. Turney & Y. Cohen, 2012).
, Norbert Marwan
Norbert Marwan (b. 1973) is deputy chair of research at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 〈Marwan@pik-potsdam.de〉. His research interests include nonlinear data analysis with interdisciplinary applications, recurrence plots, and complex networks. His publications include “Recurrence plots for the analysis of complex systems” (with M. C. Romano et al., 2006); “Complex network approach for recurrence analysis of time series” (with J. F. Donges et al., 2009); “Nonlinear detection of paleoclimate-variability transitions possibly related to human evolution” (with J. F. Donges et al., 2011); “Development and disintegration of Maya political systems in response to climate change” (with D. J. Kennett et al., 2012).
and Daniel M. Unger
Daniel M. Unger (b. 1964) is a department chair at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 〈dannu@bgu.ac.il〉. His research interests include political and diplomatic art history in early modern Italy, and food in art. His publications include “The yearning for the Holy Land in Agucchi's Program for Erminia and the Shepherds” (2008); Guercino's Paintings and His Patrons' Politics in Early Modern Italy (2010); “Guercino's Private Guercinos” (2011); “The pope, the painter, and the dynamics of social standing in the Stanza della Segnatura” (2012).

Published/Copyright: October 1, 2014

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From the journal Semiotica Volume 2014 Issue 202

Abstract

Dinner, as the main meal in the West, is a symbolically laden practice. In this paper, we seek to better understand the cultural meaning of dinner by using a unique combination of a sophisticated quantitative methodology for studying non-linear dynamics and a careful interpretative cultural semiotic analysis. By using the Corpus of Historical American English, we retrieved the words significantly collocated with “Dinner” along 200 years. Using joint recurrence analysis, we have identified the words that synchronize with each other in a non-linear fashion and used them for constructing a representation of Dinner's semiotic field. By analyzing the graph, it was found that “Soup” is the main concept associated with the practice of Dinner along 200 years. The meaning of this finding is interpreted by proposing a semiotic explanation pointing to the “surplus” of soup in the semio-sphere of the Western culture.

Keywords: semiotics; culture; food; dinner; dynamical systems; interdisciplinary research

About the authors

Yair Neuman

Yair Neuman (b. 1968) is a department chair at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 〈yneuman@bgu.ac.il〉. His research interests include semiotics, psychology, cultural psychology, and natural language processing. His publications include Reviving the Living: Meaning making in living systems (2008); “Automatic identification of themes in small group dynamics through the analysis of network motifs” (with D. Assaf & Y. Cohen, 2012); and “How language enables abstraction: A case study in computational cultural psychology” (with P. Turney & Y. Cohen, 2012).

Norbert Marwan

Norbert Marwan (b. 1973) is deputy chair of research at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 〈Marwan@pik-potsdam.de〉. His research interests include nonlinear data analysis with interdisciplinary applications, recurrence plots, and complex networks. His publications include “Recurrence plots for the analysis of complex systems” (with M. C. Romano et al., 2006); “Complex network approach for recurrence analysis of time series” (with J. F. Donges et al., 2009); “Nonlinear detection of paleoclimate-variability transitions possibly related to human evolution” (with J. F. Donges et al., 2011); “Development and disintegration of Maya political systems in response to climate change” (with D. J. Kennett et al., 2012).

Daniel M. Unger

Daniel M. Unger (b. 1964) is a department chair at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 〈dannu@bgu.ac.il〉. His research interests include political and diplomatic art history in early modern Italy, and food in art. His publications include “The yearning for the Holy Land in Agucchi's Program for Erminia and the Shepherds” (2008); Guercino's Paintings and His Patrons' Politics in Early Modern Italy (2010); “Guercino's Private Guercinos” (2011); “The pope, the painter, and the dynamics of social standing in the Stanza della Segnatura” (2012).

Published Online: 2014-10-1

Published in Print: 2014-10-1

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https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2014-0039

Keywords for this article

semiotics; culture; food; dinner; dynamical systems; interdisciplinary research