Language, social structure, and culture: A genre analysis of cooking classes in Japan and America

Extract

Patricia Mayes, Language, social structure, and culture: A genre analysis of cooking classes in Japan and America. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. xiv, 228. Hb. $102.00.

In 1979, I attended a Sunday afternoon cooking class in Osaka with a small group of Japanese friends and coworkers. There were fewer than 10 people present in the kitchen showroom to learn how to make chanko nabe, a hearty one-pot stew. I do not remember the recipe, or much else about the occasion, except that we traded casual jokes and asides with the instructor, some of them playing off the fact that the dish is well known as standard fare used to bulk up sumo wrestlers. It is astonishing yet gratifying that scholarship on language and culture has advanced to the point that there is now a book entitled Language, social structure and culture: A genre analysis of cooking classes in Japan and America. The reader looking for insights into Japanese or American culture, social structure, or cooking classes as cultural events, may be frustrated or disappointed with this book, but for scholars interested in reading a forthright essay about genre theory, supported with transcripts and exhaustive counting of clause types, it will offer useful and stimulating reading.