The 2025 Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) will be held February 28-March 2, 2025. The theme is Language and Food. 

Food and language are omnipresent and intertwined in everyday life. We use language to talk about food, and food terms have rich cultural histories and associations. Menus and food packaging labels not only provide windows on an item’s nature and quality, but also often signal association with identities such as ethnicity, region or class. Mealtime has long been a privileged site for the study of language in use, as people talk while they eat, and while they cook. Parents use language to socialize their children into food preferences and practices; even among adults, the taste of food is collaboratively negotiated in interaction: think wine tasting, or dinner conversation. Children in school cafeterias and co-workers in workplace break rooms talk about food. People participate in online forums on topics such as gourmet cooking, veganism, and weight loss; they use language about food to portray themselves as certain kinds of people (gourmand, disciplined eater, environmentalist, picky eater, athlete). People post photos of food on Instagram, recipe videos on TikTok and Facebook, and restaurant reviews on Yelp. Food is a necessity and a luxury; it is intertwined with identities (e.g., cultural, gendered, socioeconomic, political, religious), relationships (e.g., parent-child, friend-friend, host-guest), and values (e.g., healthful eating, ethical eating), all of which are negotiated through language.

GURT 2025 will bring together diverse scholars whose work explores intersections between language and food. The conference will be inclusive of multiple approaches, including (but not limited to) interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, ethnography of communication, cultural discourse analysis, narrative analysis, variation analysis, semiotics, systemic functional linguistics, historical linguistics, comparative linguistics, computational/corpus linguistics, and cognitive linguistics. We invite submissions that consider any aspect of food and language, including (but not limited to) menus, recipes, mealtime conversations, food-related online discussions, social media posts about food, food-related podcasts, food advertisements, and documentary and reality TV shows about food.

We welcome abstracts for individual papers, posters, and colloquiums that engage with any aspect of the relationship between language and food. Submissions must be complete by Saturday, November 23, 2024 (11:59pm Eastern). We accept the following submission types:

Individual papers (20 minutes followed by 10 minutes for discussion). You will be asked for:

• Author information
• The title
• An abstract (of not more than 300 words)
• An abbreviated abstract (of not more than 500 characters) for inclusion in the program
• 3-5 keywords 
• Indicate whether, if your paper is not accepted for oral presentation, you would like your paper to be considered for the Saturday poster session.

Poster presentations (to be shown during the poster session on Saturday). You will be asked for:

• Author information
• The title
• An abstract (of not more than 300 words)
• An abbreviated abstract (of not more than 500 characters) for inclusion in the program
• 3-5 keywords

Colloquiums (papers that are thematically, topically, or methodologically linked together and fit into 2 hr. 15 minute time-slot). You will be asked for:

• Author information
• The title of colloquium
• The abstract for the colloquium (of not more than 300 words)
• An abbreviated abstract (of not more than 500 characters) for the colloquium, for inclusion in the program
• In the pdf document you upload to the system, include the following regarding the colloquium's content:
  • Information about the organization of the colloquium (use of time, including for papers, any opening/closing remarks, discussant comments, Q&A period)
  • For each paper, the title and abstract (of not more than 300 words), along with an abbreviated abstract (of not more than 500 characters) for inclusion in the program.

Additional submission guidelines:

• A presenter cannot be first author on more than one paper.
• A colloquium organizer may be a paper presenter.
• A colloquium discussant may also submit a separate paper.
• Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:
  • Promise of novel and productive contribution to the study of language and food;
  • Clarity and evidence of a well-organized, engaging presentation;
  • Contribution to the conference’s diversity of theories, methods, and data sources/types.

Register for GURT 2025 here.

Visit the GURT 2025 website here for more details.