Italian Food Perception as a Marker of the Spread of Italian Identity in Germany

Abstract

Food can be considered a means of communicating and symbolising cultural peculiarities. In this sense, it is comparable to language as a marker of cultural and ethnic identity and as a tool that ‘lends form’ to the world. Both language and food “are used to maintain and create human relationships. The dinner table is a rich site for socialisation and language acquisition. Moreover, eating and talking are used to construct social hierarchies” (Gerhardt 2013, p. 4). Consequently, culinary habits and ways of consuming food, such as the sequence of courses in a meal, the ingredients in a dish and the subdivision of meals during the day disclose cultural identity. Thus, food consumption can be seen as a real identity marker since it is related to the domains of both linguistic and cultural identification and/or representation. Finally, food and the language of food unavoidably travel across cultures and transnational food migration becomes a key element in the (re)definition of ethnic identities. Moving on from such considerations, in this study, we investigate some features of perceptions of Italian food in Germany as regards cultural and societal representation, image and/or integration of Italian (culinary) identity into that society.