The performance of food has become ubiquitous in the digital realm, where we find content saturated with all things culinary, gustatory, and gastronomic. From food porn images to restaurant reviews, from what-I-eat-in-a-day-videos to cooking shows, from mukbang to forum posts with food advice – people negotiate and display their food practices online, to be consumed and regurgitated by others via their digital devices. This is often based on co-occurring linguistic performances, interweaving food, language, and digital practices into consolidated acts of meaning. “Digital P(a)lates: The Language of Online Food Practices” is an international conference bringing together scholars working on linguistic and discursive aspects related to digital food practices. The aim of the conference is to encourage dialogue between the manifold approaches to digital food performances and to provide a platform for the investigation of the public fascination with food online – and how this is constituted via linguistic resources.

The conference will be followed up by a publication of selected talks in the form of a special issue.

We invite abstract submissions on the entanglements between food, language, and digital practices. Potential foci involve but are not limited to:

• the discursive construction of eating as entertainment in digital content
• discourses of overconsumption and excess (e.g., relating to mukbang, eating shows, competitive eating, etc.)
• subversions of established food practices in the digital realm (e.g., spoof cooking shows, glickle recipe performances, etc.)
• discourses of food fads and food trends as found in digital spaces (e.g., superfoods, biohacking, ‘clean’ eating, snackification, girl dinner, ‘raw’ food diets, etc.)
• online discussions of food futures/future foods (e.g., alternative proteins, AI diets, etc.)
• the interweaving nature of digital and non-digital food practices
• resistance against digital food practices and food technologies (and how this resistance is discursively negotiated)
•  food ideologies in digital spaces (e.g., in tradwife or cottagecore content)
• ...any other issue related to the general topic of the conference (the language of digital food practices).

Abstract Submission Guidelines

Please submit abstracts of 300-400 words (excluding references), indicating whether you want to be considered for a full paper (20 minutes talk + 10 minutes Q&A) or a poster, in pdf-format to languageandfood@anglistik.fu-berlin.de The submission due date is 1 October 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by November.

A limited number of travel bursaries (up to 450€) are available to support early career scholars (PhD students or post-docs within four years after their doctorate) who identify as women. If you would like to be considered, please indicate this in your submission.

 

Please feel free to reach out to us in advance if you need childcare during the conference days.