#BaeFoLa
LightNews LightNews
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
From Bayreuth to Berlin: #BaFoLa turns #BæFoLa. Talks will of course be as delicious as ever 😊
Program invitations are going out to the mailing list soon, join us if you're interested in #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics 🍩🍩🍩
Sneak peek at Season 8: tinyurl.com/BaeFoLa
#Linguistics
Bayreuth-Berlin Food and Language Talks #BaeFola. Shows three donuts, one of them is a "Berliner" type (jam donut)
March 31, 2025 at 7:39 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
This Friday is all about the pasta 🍝
Join us for the next Bayreuth-Berlin Food and Language #BæFoLa talk by Luisa Marino on sustainability reporting by a pasta-company.
Conducted via Zoom & open to everybody interested in #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics
tinyurl.com/baefola
🍩🍩🍩
BaeFoLa flyer
May 18, 2026 at 7:26 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
As apparently hosting websites for more than a couple of days is too much to ask, here's a new link to the #BæFoLa program:
sites.google.com/view/sofia-r...
#LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics
October 8, 2025 at 7:34 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
One more hour to go! Get an icecream and join us 🍧 #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics #BæFoLa
sofiaruediger.bsky.social Sofia Rüdiger @sofiaruediger.bsky.social · Jun 15
It's #BæFoLa time! This week (June 19, 3-4pm CEST) with Irene Cenni & Camilla Vásquez on Italian food granfluencers 👵🥄🍝
Join us to find out about the social capital attributed to the nonna figure and how granfluencers commodify traditional food knowledge on Instagram.
#LanguageAndFood
BaeFoLa abstract: This talk examines the commodification and commercialization of Italian food granfluencers, focusing on how nonna influencers integrate brand collaborations, sponsored content, and other monetized practices into their Instagram videos. Taking a digital discourse analytic approach to 90 Instagram reels from three popular accounts (@Nonna Pia, @Nonna Gracie, and @Nonna Fina), our study focuses on the products promoted, the discursive and multimodal strategies used to integrate advertising, and the ways that new commercial content is reconciled with the nonnas’ established self-brands. The findings show that food products remain central to these collaborations, but promotions also extend to kitchen equipment, delivery platforms, non-food products, restaurants and cross-media appearances. Rather than appearing as external advertisements, sponsored products are typically embedded into familiar formats such as recipe demonstrations, personal narratives, and humourous intergenerational exchanges. This enables brands to draw on the symbolic capital associated with the nonna figure: authenticity, domestic expertise, tradition, and family intimacy. The analysis further highlights the crucial role of grandchildren, who contribute to the construction of the nonna’s personae through prompts, filming, editing, platform management, and interactional staging. Overall, our presentation highlights how nonna granfluencers transform domestic food knowledge into marketable cultural and economic capital as they move toward professionalized micro-celebrity and entrepreneurial branding.
June 19, 2026 at 11:54 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
It's the final #BæFoLa talk of 2025 and of course it's about baking 🥄👩‍🍳 Carolin Schneider Ward on "Multimodal Self-Reactions in the Digital Kitchen", Friday, December 19, 12:30-13:30 CET, Zoom. Let me know if you want to join! #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics
BaeFoLa Flyer Carolin Schneider Ward: Bake, Tic, Repeat: Multimodal Self-Reactions in the Digital Kitchen
December 16, 2025 at 7:59 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
#BaFoLa turns #BæFoLa! Delicious talks as always, now also with Berliner 😁🍩
Join us for #Season8 of the rebranded Bayreuth-Berlin Food and Language Talks, featuring Irene Theodoropoulou, Dominik Gerst & Crispin Thurlow. Free & open to all! DM/email me for the mailing list & please share #linguistics
BaeFoLa poster with colorful donuts BaeFoLa poster with colorful donuts Program (Summer 2025) - Season 8 April 25, 12:30-13:30 CEST: Irene Theodoropoulou (Qatar University) Branding Athens as a Gastronomic Destination: Evidence from ready2Board Magazine June 6, 12:30-13:30 CEST: Dominik Gerst (University of Duisburg-Essen) How to Live Vegan: Communicative Practices and Genres of Vegan Influencers June 27, 12:30-13:30 CEST: Crispin Thurlow (University of Bern) Super-Elite Feasting: On the Intersection of Conspicuous and Hedonistic Waste
April 7, 2025 at 11:52 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
#BæFoLa is back!
We're ready for Season 9 featuring delicious talks on:
🍆 food porn (Jonatan Leer)
🥕 veggie words (Isabel Espinosa-Zaragoza)
🧁 baking videos (Carolin Schneider-Ward)
🍳 cooking videos (Stefan Hauser)

More info at tinyurl.com/baefola

#LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics
BaeFoLa Poster with a donut for each talk October 31, 12:30-13:30 CET: Jonatan Leer (Örebro University) Food Porn: Food Aesthetics in a Digital Age November 28, 12:30-13:30 CET: Isabel Espinosa-Zaragoza (University of Alicante) VeggieWords: Lexical Innovation in Vegan and Vegetarian Product Naming December 19, 12:30-13:30 CET: Carolin Schneider Ward (University of Duisburg-Essen) Bake, Tic, Repeat: Multimodal Self-Reactions in the Digital Kitchen January 30, 12:30-13:30 CET: Stefan Hauser (University of Teacher Education Zug) Dynamisation Processes in Cooking Videos on TikTok: A Media Linguistic Approach
October 2, 2025 at 7:13 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
Starting in 45 minutes! (DM for Zoom link if you want to join spontaneously to hear a talk about pasta & sustainability reporting :)
#BæFoLa
#LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics
sofiaruediger.bsky.social Sofia Rüdiger @sofiaruediger.bsky.social · May 18
This Friday is all about the pasta 🍝
Join us for the next Bayreuth-Berlin Food and Language #BæFoLa talk by Luisa Marino on sustainability reporting by a pasta-company.
Conducted via Zoom & open to everybody interested in #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics
tinyurl.com/baefola
🍩🍩🍩
BaeFoLa flyer
May 22, 2026 at 9:47 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
Last week of the semester so let's see what's left:
2 talks
5 course sessions
1 online talk (#BaeFoLa)
4 train rides
..............
vacation loading!
sofiaruediger.bsky.social Sofia Rüdiger @sofiaruediger.bsky.social · Jun 26
A little countdown to the much needed yearly bike tour (leaving July 18):
3 talks
2 guests to be hosted
13 course sessions
1 online talk to be hosted (#BaeFoLa 🤩)
12 train rides (😱)
1 birthday to be celebrated (🥳)
Roses
July 13, 2026 at 7:16 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
Today! Let me know if you want to join spontaneously for some #FridayFoodFun 🍩🍩🍩 #BæFoLa
sofiaruediger.bsky.social Sofia Rüdiger @sofiaruediger.bsky.social · Oct 27
#BæFoLa is back 🍩🍩🍩 We're about to hit off Season 9 of the Bayreuth-Berlin Food and Language Talks this Friday (Oct 31), 12:30-13:30 CET, with Jonatan Leer's presentation on "Food Porn: Food Aesthetics in a Digital Age". 👅🥞📱
Join us via Zoom if you're interested, DM for link.
#CulinaryLinguistics
flyer for Jonatan Leer's talk
October 31, 2025 at 9:11 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
November is nearly over so it's time for our next #BæFoLa session! 🍩 This Friday, Nov 28 (12:30-13:30 CET), Isabel Espinosa-Zaragoza will talk on Zoom about "VeggieWords: Lexical Innovation in Vegan and Vegetarian Product Naming". All welcome! #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics #VeggieWords 🥕🥬🥦
BaeFoLa-Flyer with a donut text: In recent years, the rise of vegetarianism and veganism has not only transformed consumer habits but also reshaped the language of food. As plant-based products enter mainstream markets, they encounter both legal challenges around labeling and the need for brands to signal innovation and authenticity. This talk explores how linguistic creativity influences product naming by drawing on a manually compiled corpus with product names from international plant-based brands. Instances from the corpus illustrate how spelling innovations, playful blends and positively connotated words, amongst others, create new ways of conveying the product’s ‘plant-based’ nature while appealing to consumer imagination and adapting to both regulatory frameworks and marketing needs. Beyond individual cases, these patterns reveal how branding contributes to a broader shift in English vocabulary, giving rise to persuasive and inventive naming. In conclusion, linguistic devices act as innovative tools for conveying specific product attributes, while fostering lexical creativity and novelty in Modern English and enhancing brand positioning, appeal, and memorability.
November 24, 2025 at 6:10 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
It's the grand season finale of #BaeFoLa Season 9 and your last chance to attend a session this season:
Friday, Jan 30, 12:30-13:30 (CET)
Stefan Hauser (University of Teacher Education Zug): Dynamisation Processes in Cooking Videos on TikTok - A Media Linguistic Approach 📹👩‍🍳
#LanguageAndFood 🍩🍩🍩
BaeFoLa Flyer
January 26, 2026 at 10:38 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
Happening in ~three hours today 📽️👩‍🍳

#FoodTok goes #BaeFoLa!

#LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics

DM me for Zoom link if you want to join spontaneously!
sofiaruediger.bsky.social Sofia Rüdiger @sofiaruediger.bsky.social · Jan 26
It's the grand season finale of #BaeFoLa Season 9 and your last chance to attend a session this season:
Friday, Jan 30, 12:30-13:30 (CET)
Stefan Hauser (University of Teacher Education Zug): Dynamisation Processes in Cooking Videos on TikTok - A Media Linguistic Approach 📹👩‍🍳
#LanguageAndFood 🍩🍩🍩
BaeFoLa Flyer
January 30, 2026 at 8:21 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
#BæFoLa is back 🍩🍩🍩 We're about to hit off Season 9 of the Bayreuth-Berlin Food and Language Talks this Friday (Oct 31), 12:30-13:30 CET, with Jonatan Leer's presentation on "Food Porn: Food Aesthetics in a Digital Age". 👅🥞📱
Join us via Zoom if you're interested, DM for link.
#CulinaryLinguistics
flyer for Jonatan Leer's talk
October 27, 2025 at 7:47 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
It's #BæFoLa time! This week (June 19, 3-4pm CEST) with Irene Cenni & Camilla Vásquez on Italian food granfluencers 👵🥄🍝
Join us to find out about the social capital attributed to the nonna figure and how granfluencers commodify traditional food knowledge on Instagram.
#LanguageAndFood
BaeFoLa abstract: This talk examines the commodification and commercialization of Italian food granfluencers, focusing on how nonna influencers integrate brand collaborations, sponsored content, and other monetized practices into their Instagram videos. Taking a digital discourse analytic approach to 90 Instagram reels from three popular accounts (@Nonna Pia, @Nonna Gracie, and @Nonna Fina), our study focuses on the products promoted, the discursive and multimodal strategies used to integrate advertising, and the ways that new commercial content is reconciled with the nonnas’ established self-brands. The findings show that food products remain central to these collaborations, but promotions also extend to kitchen equipment, delivery platforms, non-food products, restaurants and cross-media appearances. Rather than appearing as external advertisements, sponsored products are typically embedded into familiar formats such as recipe demonstrations, personal narratives, and humourous intergenerational exchanges. This enables brands to draw on the symbolic capital associated with the nonna figure: authenticity, domestic expertise, tradition, and family intimacy. The analysis further highlights the crucial role of grandchildren, who contribute to the construction of the nonna’s personae through prompts, filming, editing, platform management, and interactional staging. Overall, our presentation highlights how nonna granfluencers transform domestic food knowledge into marketable cultural and economic capital as they move toward professionalized micro-celebrity and entrepreneurial branding.
June 15, 2026 at 4:10 PM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
Today ⬇️ Last chance to get in your language and food fix of the year #BaeFoLa #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics
sofiaruediger.bsky.social Sofia Rüdiger @sofiaruediger.bsky.social · Dec 16
It's the final #BæFoLa talk of 2025 and of course it's about baking 🥄👩‍🍳 Carolin Schneider Ward on "Multimodal Self-Reactions in the Digital Kitchen", Friday, December 19, 12:30-13:30 CET, Zoom. Let me know if you want to join! #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics
BaeFoLa Flyer Carolin Schneider Ward: Bake, Tic, Repeat: Multimodal Self-Reactions in the Digital Kitchen
December 19, 2025 at 8:38 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
The summer term is right around the corner & so is Season 10 of #BæFoLa (Bayreuth-Berlin Food and Language lecture series)! 🍩🍩🍩🍩
Join us for all things #LanguageAndFood, this season as international as ever with speakers from the UK, Italy, Belgium, the US, and India 🤩
#Linguistics
BaeFoLa Flyer Program (Summer 2026) - Season 10 April 24, 12:30-13:30 CEST: Justyna Robinson (University of Sussex) Neology in Food and Drink Terminology: Recent Perspectives and Developments in Research by the European Network of Lexical Innovation May 22, 12:30-13:30 CEST: Luisa Marino (University of Naples "Federico II") "Good for You. Good for the Planet": Trust-Building and Corporate Legitimacy in Barilla's Sustainability Reports June 19, 15:00-16:00 CEST: Irene Cenni (Ghent University) & Camilla Vásquez (University of South Florida) Self-Branding of Italian Food Granfluencers July 17, 12:30-13:30 CEST: Revathi Suresh (St Joseph's University, Bengaluru) Chattichoru as Spectacle: Constructing Malayali Identity and Food Narratives in Online Spaces
April 7, 2026 at 7:07 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
A little countdown to the much needed yearly bike tour (leaving July 18):
3 talks
2 guests to be hosted
13 course sessions
1 online talk to be hosted (#BaeFoLa 🤩)
12 train rides (😱)
1 birthday to be celebrated (🥳)
Roses
June 26, 2026 at 2:05 PM
lulind.bsky.social
Great talk by Prof. Thurlow on super-elite feasting and the intersection of conspicuous and hedonistic waste!
(Bayreuth-Berlin, Food and language Talks #BæFoLa)
June 27, 2025 at 11:52 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
Goodbye #BaeFoLa! Hello #FoodAndLanguageLab!

🍩 Season 11 starts this month and it was time for a rebranding. New name, new design, but the same amazing community (always open for new members 🤩) and wonderful talks 🍩

Organizing this is one of my favorite things to do 🥰

#CulinaryLinguistics
flyer for the Food & Language Lab, sporting different kinds of donuts and the program Program (Winter 2026/2027) - Season 11 October 30, 12:30-13:30 CET: Todd Allen (Kansai University) Food, Drink and the Making of Hospitality in Japan’s Small Bars and Izakaya November 27, 12:30-13:30 CET: Paul Victor Patinadan (Nanyang Technological University) Echoing Food Voices: Cooking, Eating, and Savouring in Singaporean Palliation and Bereavement Care December 18, 12:30-13:30 CET: Eva Triebl (University of Vienna) "If I Ate That, I Would Be Huge": Appetite Displays and the Management of Thinness Online January 29, 12:30-13:30 CET: Ashli Stokes (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) Communicating Scotland through Food: From Devolution to Possible Futures
October 5, 2026 at 4:45 PM
lizetkruyff.bsky.social
Would love to join! #BaeFOLa talk on Friday 251219
December 16, 2025 at 8:07 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
Thank you 😊 looking forward to seeing you at BaeFoLa!
April 7, 2025 at 8:35 PM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
#BæFoLa is going double digits!
The first talk of Season 10 will be held by Justyna Robinson from the University of Sussex, introducing work of the European Network of Lexical Innovation (www.cost.eu/actions/CA22...) concerned with food and drink terminology. Special focus on wine 🍷
#LanguageAndFood
BaeFoLa flyer: In this presentation, I will outline recent research on the lexical domains of food and drink conducted by researchers collaborating under the umbrella project European Network of Lexical Innovation. This COST Action initiative brings together researchers from across Europe and beyond with the aim of forming new networks of expertise to advance research in neology more broadly. The domain of food and drink is particularly relevant in the context of lexical innovation. On the one hand, it is a well-established and clearly defined domain. On the other hand, it is one that consistently generates new terminology and concepts. In my presentation, I will outline the current research mainly focusing on the domain of wine and suggest lines of further inquiry.
April 24, 2026 at 7:10 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
Don't miss the last #BæFoLa talk of the summer! Today at 12:30 CEST 🍩🍩🍩
sofiaruediger.bsky.social Sofia Rüdiger @sofiaruediger.bsky.social · Jul 13
Final #BæFoLa talk of Season 10 coming up this Friday, July 17, 12:30-13:30 CEST 🍩🤩🍩
Join us to hear Revathi Suresh's talk on "Chattichoru as Spectacle: Constructing Malayali Identity and Food Narratives in Online Spaces".
#LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics
Abstract: The talk presents the semantic shift associated with the word chattichoru in Malayalam by exploring how Malayalam social media food content functions as a discursive project. In Kerala homes, chattichoru used to refer to a simple leftover meal directly eaten from a chatti or pan, usually by the women of a house. In contrast, the new chattichoru meal is a viral spectacle of abundance. The study examined ten YouTube Shorts on the chattichoru meal; the audio tracks were annotated, translated and transcribed using the tool ELAN and further glossing and lexical analysis was done using FLEx, a linguistics database software. Further analysis involved adapting the critical discourse approach (Fairclough 1995) by treating YouTube Shorts as multimodal texts, in line with Benson (2015). The findings show that along with the discourse structure of the short-form video, textual aspects such as repeated or exaggerated use of modifiers and sensorial language function as authenticity markers, thereby playing a crucial role in conventionalising the new meaning of chattichoru. The analysis attempts to place Malayalam food trends, such as the chattichoru videos, as a crucial meaning making and identity forming online practice in the contemporary gastro-political context in India.
July 17, 2026 at 7:48 AM
sofiaruediger.bsky.social
This Friday (June 6), 12:30-13:30 CEST: the next #BaeFoLa session with Dominik Gerst @dgerst.bsky.social on "How to Live Vegan: Communicative Practices and Genres of Vegan Influencers" 🌿🥦🥬 All welcome (even carnivores 😱), DM me for Zoom link. #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics 🍩🍩🍩
Veganism has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years. In social media, the type of vegan influencer has emerged who demonstrates the benefits and everyday requirements of such a diet and lifestyle to a broad audience. The talk focuses on the question of how knowledge about veganism is produced and disseminated in social media and how pressing discourses are taken up in the process. The focus is on how ‘vegan knowledge production’ at the interface of natural sciences, philosophy and ethics, the food industry, animal rights activism and health and sustainability discourses is linked to the everyday perspective of vegans. To this end, the talk will examine genres and communicative practices of vegan influencers (e.g., the veganization of recipes, vegan #WhatIEatInADay videos, product tests, shopping tutorials or formats such as ‘debate a vegan’) and work out how they react to the fundamental question ‘how to live vegan’. Based on this, it examines what (new) knowledge is communicated and made relevant in the context of an omnivorous society. Organized by Sofia Rüdiger (Berlin) & Susanne Mühleisen (Bayreuth) Join the mailing list: sofia.ruediger@fu-berlin.de Bayreuth-Berlin Food and Language Talks #BæFoLa How to Live Vegan: Communicative Practices and Genres of Vegan Influencers
June 2, 2025 at 6:31 AM