Rye bread and halal: Enregisterment of food practices in the primary classroom

• Published in: Language & communication 2014-01, Vol.34 (Jan), p.17-34
• Main Author: Karrebaek, Martha Sif
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Classroom interaction; Elementary school students; Enregisterment; Food; Ideology; Interpersonal communication; Minority–majority relations; Social interaction; Socialization
• ISSN: 0271-5309; 1873-3395
• DOI: 10.1016/j.langcom.2013.08.002

•Food items participate in processes of enregisterment.•In the classroom studied food ideologies were based on health and religion.•The health register and the religious register were hierarchically ordered.•Within the institutionally dominant social model, healthy indexed respectability.•Within the Religious model, halal indexed respectability. This paper demonstrates how primary school children use food to organize social space, how they do it linguistically, and how they draw on different cultural and social models when doing it. Data comprise recordings from lunch encounters in a primary classroom over two years, and Linguistic Ethnography, as well as Language Socialization constitute the methodological frameworks. The food registers analysed are the Health register and the Halal register. It is shown that there is a specific interpretation of the Health register, and the Halal register is marginalized. On a more general level it is suggested that examination of food events enables us to understand the everyday significance for children of grand notions such as health, hierarchy, and globalization.