Delicious Words: East Asian Food Words in English

Jieun Kiaer

Apr. 2020 · Routledge

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As societies across the globe are becoming increasingly interwoven at an unprecedented speed and across an impressive scope, so too is the world of food, allowing the English language to develop an ever-widening culinary vocabulary. This book examines the lives of such words in today’s discourse on eating and drinking, focusing on foreign - particularly East Asian - influences on culinary terms in English, and how words are born and evolve in a modern transcultural environment. Through the lens of culinary words, this book demonstrates that foreign-origin and hybrid words, previously considered marginal, have become a main source of new imports into our daily lexicon.

With case studies from Japan to Mongolia, Hong Kong to Korea, China to Vietnam, and beyond, this book examines how more and more words are becoming borderless and forming their own new global identities. By showcasing some lesser-known regional cuisines, alongside staple dishes that many of us already know and love, this book offers a wide range of examples in order to illustrate the metamorphosis of the manner in which we engage with food words.

This book will be of interest to general readers, as well as those who are engaged in East Asian studies, English linguistics, intercultural communication studies, translation studies, and lexicography.

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Jieun Kiaer is an Associate Professor of Korean Language and Linguistics at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include the formation of translingual/transcultural words and dynamic lexicons. She is particularly interested in the role of social media in the global lexicon. Kiaer is the series editor for Routledge Studies in East Asian Translation and has most recently published Translingual Words (Routledge, 2019).