As I used to say to my students from time to time, lawyers aren’t allowed to use their fists: it’s all done with language, so develop a love for that tool. And I think that somewhere along the line, most lawyers do in fact wind up if not exactly loving language, then certainly caring about its use. This is why I like the blog Language Log [1], and have recommended it a number of times on Slaw.
But all that jaw-jaw, as Churchill might have said, can pall. So as a break I like to cook (and to eat). It puts my mind, and maw, in another mode — and lets me use my hands, if not my fists.
So I’m ambivalent, perhaps, about bringing those worlds together, as the Language of Food [2] does. Dan Jurafsky is a linguist at Stanford who teaches a course in the Language of Food and publishes essays [2] under the same rubric. (You can’t really call it a blog, because the entries are longer than typical blog entries, and much less frequent.)
The current essay is on dessert. (“And speaking of bad for you, let’s not forget pork desserts, like the pistachio-bacon ice cream served by my neighborhood ice creamery …”) Here is history, etymology, sociology and some good humour. How is it that dessert doesn’t have a real translation in Chinese? How has the American practice of eating the salad course changed over time? What is the recipe for the 1545 early Tudor dish of chicken upon sauce? It’s all there in the essay on dessert.
Then there’s one on ketchup, and a third on the entrée. Tasty reading. Enjoy.