We are what we eat: analyzing food and drink idioms in English, French, German, and Spanish

Conventional ways of wording, which span from routine formulae to proverbs, through binomials, collocations, and idioms have been considered indicators of underlying cultural models as well as triggers for the shaping of cultural models.While many figurative idioms and proverbs designate ideas, facts, and evaluations that are culturally boundless in Western terms, the syntactic structures used to disclose them may range from the completely boundless to the totally bound, depending on the source domain. If the source domain is culturally salient, it is more likely that idioms’ literal readings will differ more radically across different languages, despite a shared implicated meaning. One particularly salient source domain regards the lexical field of food and drink. By comparing and contrasting food and drink idioms in English, French, German, and Spanish, the aim of this essay is to gauge the extent of the cultural differences experienced by these linguistic communities. The continued social and literary contacts between the English, French, German, and Spanish people have determined a common core of thinking and acting, which has surprisingly resulted in a series of similar food and drink experiences.