“It tastes even awesomer than it looks!” - Expert identity in computer-mediated food discourses

Food is strongly connected to culture and lifestyle, and it is a central topic in human interaction. Robin Lakoff (2006: 165) points to the strong connections between food and identity, stating that "'minor identities' like culinary preferences and sophistication contribute significantly to our sense of ourselves." Expertise is a deciding factor when it comes to creating identities in different food-related genres, and authors frequently adapt food discourse depending on their perception of their audience as experts or non-experts (Lakoff 2006, Bex 1996, Wharton 2010).

My paper investigates the creation and negotiation of expert identity as it occurs in video-mediated food discourse. In particular, I analyze intercultural Skype conversations about food. I investigate the role that expert identities play on various levels. My findings suggest that two types of expert identities are created and negotiated in the data: culinary experts as having a certain degree of expertise in terms of cooking and food-related knowledge and cultural experts (or non-experts) in the context of culturally 'typical' food items. This reflects research findings that suggest that (non-)expertise is related to presupposed cooking knowledge (see e.g. the studies on recipes by Norrick 1983 and Cotter 1997), but also that this role may be related to a certain 'traditionality' and 'cultural expertise' when it comes to national dishes (cf. Brunner, Diemer, and Schmidt 2014, Diemer and Brunner 2020), which could both be construed in the context of authenticity. The paper illustrates the key role that food plays in the identity creation processes involved in intercultural video-mediated interaction, contributing to the understanding of the complex interrelations between food, discourse and (expert) identity.