Salad bowl

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 11:04 AM 1/14/02 -0500, you wrote:
>On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Paul McFedries wrote:
>
>#The "salad bowl" metaphor is used to describe a multicultural society in
>#which each ethnic group maintains its own cultural identity rather than
>#being assimilated into a larger, common culture (the "melting pot").
>         [...]
>
>Whoever Paul was replying to (sorry) had said about the
>latter:
>
> > "Melting pot" is a hot-metal metaphor, not a food
> >metaphor.  I am not sure what you mean by a metaphorical
> >"salad bowl."
>
>Most people are not familiar with hot-metal (industrial)
>imagery. I had always assumed that "melting pot" was
>culinary, without examining it closely. I'm not so familiar
>with the kitchen that I could say "there's no such thing in
>cooking", and I associated it with a stew or soup, or
>possibly a fondue (which does melt, as the name implies). I
>have a vague sense that the explanations of it that I'd seen
>also referred to cooking; maybe "flavors melting together."
>
>I suspect, though I can't prove it, that "salad bowl" was
>deliberately coined in response to such a culinary
>interpretation of "melting pot". And I'm certain, though I
>can't give a citation, that the first time I saw "salad
>bowl", or one of the very first times, it was accompanied by
>an explicit assertion of that contrast to the "melting pot",
>just as you describe and cite:
>
>#The underlying idea is that when you combine salad
>#ingredients they retain their "identity": the lettuce is
>#still recognizable as lettuce, the carrots as carrots,
>#etc.
>
>         [snip citation]
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel
>    Linguist at Large

And a third metaphor is the "patchwork quilt," used by Jesse Jackson
(though perhaps not coined by him?).  It's not culinary but is quaintly
domestic, with the separate pieces idea.

_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm