Chefs, Waitresses, Patrons, and Critics: The Discursive Representation of Social Actors in Restaurant Guides (Brussels, 1960-2000)

The restaurant is a place of various social interactions, not only between patrons, but also between owners and staff. The representation of these interactions in one particular literary genre, the restaurant review, is of particular interest. Through the use of linguistic methods such as frequency and collocational analysis, a number of discursive transformations are uncovered. The most striking discovery is the near-disappearance of references to particular social actors and the relations of power between them throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s as compared with the two previous decades. One possible explanation focuses on the changed nature of restaurant guide publishing.