The Language of Food and Its Dictionary

Abstract

 A dictionary of the language of food, as a dictionary of a special sublanguage in the Serbian language, does not exist to this day. Too ordinary or too prone to changes, the description of the lexicon of this sublanguage escapes the attention of language researchers, and confuses lexicographers. The paper analyzes examples of lexicographic processing of individual lexemes of this language and shows that the description of the culinary lexicon cannot be solved by standard lexicographic procedures. A digital corpus consisting of different types of texts describing the language of food is presented, including cookbooks, ethnographic and historical studies, literary works, etc. It is shown that the language of food evolves rapidly and continuously, and its evolution is closely related to changes in society. Finally, the author advocates the creation of an encyclopaedic dictionary of the language of food and indicates its basic properties.