The two faces of appetite: Relevance and the question of food as art

Can there be “languages of food” in Nelson Goodman’s sense of “languages of art”? Food appears like a borderline case because of its strong dependence on context and on the individuals involved. We seem to have difficulty either comparing food with language or seeing it as art. This is at odds with the fact that food has been recognized as an art form for decades by art institutions. The paper approaches this problem on a level often neglected in the discussion: pragmatics, the application of language in context. Cognitive scientists Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber have shown that the use of language is ultimately based not on rules, but on relevance. Relevance in turn depends on contexts and individuals. Such dependence, therefore, does not make food a borderline case. Rather, it is something that food and language have in common. But can we use a concept of relevance to analyze food? Following the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz, relevance has two sides, termed here “typicality” and “spontaneity”. Both sides of relevance are found to shape our experience of food in striking ways. Food is a particularly clear example of a more general, relevance-driven context dependence of both language and the arts.