Abstract Summary
By working with German and French children on food odors, we want to explore food as cultural-based concept. Our verbalisation of food odors relies on our daily experiences but how exactly is culture involved in this cognitive process? That’s what we’re looking for.
Abstract :
Context: Expressing odors relies mostly on the identification of the source, or using words from other senses systems. Candau and Jeanjean (2006) call it the “olfactive silence”: German and French don’t break this rule. They have only few specific words to express odors. Thus, the way we express smell is the result of a perceptive and lexical training. This process begins in the early childhood and continues during several years. Moreover, one can observe that children don‘t talk much about food odors at school. They get the olfactive knowledge out of school context, with family and friends.
Aims: We are compiling a new corpus in German and making a contrastive study on the acquisition of olfactive food vocabulary between comparable individuals. How do olfactive impressions and the way they express them explain their apprehension of the world and the social aspect of food? Social educational aspects are relevant too.
Data: Comparable corpora. 3 types of data
I-free sorting task with food odours.
II- spoken corpora: explanation of sorting.
III-semi structured interviews to know which role odors play in the family and their thematisation.
Interviews with 17 German children and their family.
Data treatment: transcribed, annotated with Glozz.
-quantitative treatment and lemmatization, tagging with TXM.
-qualitative analysis with SphinxQuali
Methodologies
Results: We see subtle differences between the two countries and between children from the same country. There are contrasts regarding the acquisition and verbalization of food odors. Cognitive tasks have some differences as well. Some children sort in an hedonistic and emotional way, some others classify by prior knowledge.
