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Cuisine Linguistics of British and American English : Are the culinary vocabularies of British and American English converging or diverging?Sohl, Gabriella January 2012 (has links)
This study is intended to unveil whether the culinary vocabulary of British English and American English are likely to converge or diverge in the future, as a way of contributing to understanding the evolution of the English language and its varieties. The topic itself was founded in travels to America which were paired with nearly fifteen years of interaction with British English, leading to understanding that some (food) words come to have different meanings even in similar languages, and possibly also within the same language. Understanding this led to the thesis question: Are the culinary vocabularies of British English and American English likely to converge or diverge? This is an area of study which has seemingly been left untreated so far under the umbrella of Linguistics. As such, the research in this essay focuses on determining a future convergence or divergence between the language varieties from a language historical aspect as well as taking sociolinguistic aspects of language change into account. These aspects are fashion, foreign influence and social need. In addition to the research, a survey involving 15 British and 15 American students between the ages of 18 and 30 which helps determining the current interaction between the two language varieties. Through the research and analysis of these areas of interest, it is found that the culinary vocabularies of the two language varieties are unlikely to converge completely, but are in a state both of constant partial convergence and divergence.
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