George Lakoff (and others) on "foodie"

[Laurence Horn]

Ah, Trekkie, that's the one that was eluding me.  Thanks, Ben.  So trekkie : trekker :: Trotskyite : Trotskyist.  I like Geoff's 'enthusiast of ___ gloss too.

LH


On Jul 1, 2014, at 10:15 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 9:31 AM, Geoffrey Steven Nathan wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 9:21 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>> 
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/opinion/beyond-foodie-its-about-our-values.html
>>> [see embedded link for the Mark Bittman op-ed at issue]
>>> 
>>> Note that Lakoff's argument presupposes that the -ie of "foodie" is the
>>> same suffix that we have in "Barbie", "baggie", "birdie", "hoodie", and
>>> "selfie", but none of these are quasi-agentives the way "foodie" is, and
>>> other than the -ie or -y hypocoristic for names (Barbie, Georgie,
>>> Billy,..), the others are diminutives for non-human objects. You'd
>>> think a more relevant example might be "hippie", "Yippee", or even
>>> "commie", where an Xie is someone adhering to the X philosophy or an
>>> aficionado/true-believer in X. (There are probably other examples I'm
>>> not remembering. Anyone else?) These may well be trivializing, but
>>> it's not just the -ie form that's responsible for trivializing and
>>> pejoration; we've spent some time knocking around the -er of "truther",
>>> "birther", etc. for 'adherent of the X conspiracy', also . I agree with
>>> the following letter suggesting that "foodist" might be the best choice,
>>> unless it's too reminiscent of "nudist" (given the rhyme) or
>>> "naturist".
>> 
>> I agree with Larry's intuition that the -ie suffix is not the hypocoristic suffix
>> in 'Suzie'. It strikes me as more like 'Yalie'--with some kind of enthusiast
>> connotation. Like Larry I can't think of other examples, but COCA probably
>> has some. Don't have time right now to construct the right kind of search.
> 
> For "X-ie" = 'enthusiast of X', the example that comes most readily to
> mind is "Trekkie". (Of course, Trekkies themselves prefer "Trekker".)
> 
> Steven Poole complained about the "cloying, infantile cuteness" of
> "foodie" a couple of years ago in his book "You Aren't What You Eat",
> excerpted here:
> 
> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/28/lets-start-foodie-backlash
> 
> Poole too prefers "foodist", which he says was "used from the late
> 19th century for hucksters selling fad diets (which is quite apt)." He
> sardonically describes a foodist as one who "operates under the
> prejudices of a governing ideology, viewing the whole world through
> the grease-smeared lenses of a militant eater."
> 
> --bgz
> 
> 
> -- 
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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