Gastronomic Culture In Russian Internet: Discoursive Semantic Analysis

Content analysis of online food-stores/supermarkets/hypermarkets

The content (ads and consumer feedback) of online food stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets was examined using the method of content analysis and discourse analysis. The study was done in two stages: empirical and analytical. Texts produced by the seller and the consumer were prepared for analysis and actually treated separately. At the empirical stage of the study, we colleted our data and reformatted them for the TextAnalysis software. Then we did primary ranking of the data resulting from machine processing. Quantitative processing of the web-sites’ content revealed the basic concepts and their relations making a thematic structure/semantic network of the texts. Within this structure were revealed and identified notions having the strongest semantic ‘weight’ and accordingly being the core of the respective text. The final step of the empirical stage was automated summarization of the data with subsequent text ‘polishing’. The second (analytical) stage was qualitative analysis and translation of the resulting data to the plane of cultural linguistics, semiotics and analytical psychology.

Study of Internet food-memes

Unlike marketing messages, Internet memes about food, over and above the text information, places great emphasis on visuality. Genealogically such memes are akin to folklore; this said we decided to apply here structural semiotic analysis methods common for studies of traditional mythology. The analysis has three stages:

• Information gathering on gastronomy, revealing and identifying the key values and functions;

• Determining relations between values and functions, their distribution among oppositions;

• Building up an integral system of values and functions, marking relations between such.

Comparison of study results data

The resulting data was compared with the results of a structural semiotic and psychoanalytic study of traditional culture texts and marketing communication, on the basis of which a series of semantic constants were identified.

Supply/demand thesaurus in the food market

In marketing messages and ads, the max. value of semantic weight (100) is usually demonstrated by the names of stores or store chains i.e. they are the core ‘topic’, which is only logical. Other key topics disseminated by food marketing and having the semantic weight of 99 are consolidated into several semantic groups with regard to their semantic relations:

1. Company image: food store, company, personnel, care, product range, products, promotion, promote personnel, increasing the level, degree, preservation, emphasis, quality control.

2. Assortment of products : you will like, quality, property, tasty, satisfaction, we give pleasure, shelf life, premium quality, true delicacies, quality of delivered products.

3. Services : order, money refund, replacement of goods, replacement at your will, delivery, we deliver, delivery of food, you will get, the moment of delivery, comply with special civil arrangements, loyalty points, payment, order finalization, service, you get the delivery, time of delivery, to offer, I am happy to offer, couriers, price at the store, shop catalogues, no markup, instead of a two-hour journey, sales promotion, client loyalty card, offers, recipes.

The semantic weight of 100 in the narrative structure of consumer messages to the store has the idea of ‘purchase order’, which is characteristic, first, of online ordering system, and second, in the periods when ‘no-contact delivery of goods’ is essential (times of pandemics, etc.) The key topics sent through the system of feedback with the weight of 99, are also arranged in semantic groups with regard to their semantic relations:

1. Service quality : delivery of my order, several hours, criticism, delivered, order picking, storage, replacement, please specify, tracking, goods out of stock, calculated, out of stock, onsite production of food, quickly.

2. Evaluation of service agents: courier, quickly, receipt, polite, thanks, money, customer service, I phoned, application, order picker, I was told, web-site, phone number, the order is delivered.

3. Quality and properties of food: taste, tasty, taste and colour, saturated, best before, aroma, I like, I like to add, thickness, depicted, decently, frozen, I revealed, it turned out that, be stored, meat, wrapped up, packaging.

The majority of these notions establish firm links with each other due to their heavy semantic weight; therefore their consolidation also lets us get the feeling of the marketing message rhetoric and of consumer preferences. If the semantic groups of the marketing thesaurus can be, to a certain degree, associated with individual companies, conversely the semantics of consumer feedback ideas fundamentally defy any differentiation and rather reflect the needs of a typical Russian consumer.

Archetypes in marketing communication

A more detailed consideration of the conceptual system and sub-topic specifications allows us to state that today’s consumer leaving comments in the “Feedback” section of a web-site (mostly female – a housewife) appreciates simplicity, usability and fast delivery, retailer honesty, precise service, product taste, product appearance including packing exterior. These priorities are also revealed during qualitative analysis of consumer valuations.

The seller promotes the philosophy of hedonism, economy and cost effectiveness, care for and full satisfaction of consumer needs, i.e. all that stand for consumer ‘happiness’ in a consumer society. The concept of ‘care’ manifests itself in ‘special control’ of and guidance on healthy/specialized nutrition (incl. vegan, non-gluten and non-lactose products). Such expressions as “You will be the true creator of delicious foods at you own kitchen” places the consumer in the position of a local demiurge in his/her own right.

To these interim results we applied the method of marketing behavior models’ grouping by USA colleagues Mark and Pearson (2005) as based upon the theory of collective subconscious and archetypes by K.G.Jung. We revealed that online stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets, in their respective marketing strategies, embody the archetypes of the Caregiver, Ruler, Lover and Creator.

The concept of ‘care’ is expressed in the rhetoric of ‘parental custody’ including the fact of ‘feeding’, providing convenient service, and the ability to hear the customer’s opinion. The character of the Caregiver is a symbol of mother/father, family, homemade ‘right’ food, that are valuated positively. The focus on sustainability and stability that triggers identification of the archetype ‘Caregiver’, also characterizes the models of the Ruler and the Creator. The Ruler takes on responsibility for product/service quality control, lavishly distributes discounts, bonuses and VIP consumer statuses. His authoritarian control of all processes and his custody are necessary to avoid food delivery disruptions and make the situation predictable. The Creator systematically demonstrates innovative reform and improvement of production processes and services; he invites customers to co-create and directs implementation of creative recipes at customers’ kitchens.

Representatives of various types of love are such categories as ‘tasty’, ‘satisfaction’, ‘pleasure’, ‘exquisite’, ‘delight’, ‘bliss’, ‘gourmet’, ‘team’. Links between feeding (nutrition) and parental love, parallels between pleasure of eating and romantic relations, interaction with the sacral sphere through precious offerings (gifts) go back to archaic rituals and ancient mythology.

Demand for such archetypal models in modern gastronomic brands can be accounted for by the fact that for today’s man who lives in a permanently changing and unpredictable environment, only logical will be longing for stability, order, love and recognition. And regular renewal, brought about by the Creator, is a prerequisite for a brand’s competitiveness and sustainability of the whole system.

Despite the fact that the classification of archetypes used here has been applied to mainly advertising, branding and marketing, consumer behavior may also be a source of individual proto-characters going back to the characteristics of the Idealist, the Explorer, and the Everyperson. It is believed that consumer attraction works better if “your message conforms to an archetype that dominates their consciousness or springs up in it” (Mark & Pearson, 2005, p. 151). In the Internet communication within Russian gastronomic culture we can discern other types of complementarity. We considered them from the point of view of semantic matching; definition of whether these combinations are effective in business terms was not the goal of the study.

The marketing model ‘care’ addresses the consumer who implements in his/her behavior the archetype of the Idealist. Only the Idealist can organize the environment that is ideal for him/her, where he/she will feel safe, get abundance of everything, and find primeval simplicity and calm. The Ruler, in his turn, will ensure quality control, stability and economy. This notion of an ideal place goes back to the idea of Paradise after which both the Idealist and the Explorer are striving; only the former refrains from actively looking for it and waits for its coming about here and now. No surprise that the Idealist is attracted to the picture of a true, environmentally ideal world, which is important in the context of gastronomic culture. Any nonconformity with this idea of a perfect world irritates him.

The Explorer is focused on discovery, so his communicative model is combined with the character of the Creator, occasionally the Lover. The Explorer is attracted by the spirit of freedom and the values of individualism that are being translated from the Creator. The Explorer is in search of new taste sensations, exotics, and various creative decisions. He is always keen on something, has little time for waiting, so he values the speed of service.

The Everyperson as a consumer appreciates friendship, respects one’s dignity and merit, from which follows that he would rather express certain solidarity with the retail company, send thanks to one or a group of its personnel, than complaint. Another of his strategies is to join in the opinion of a group of customers in respect of a product, since his main trait is the willing to belong to a whole or merge with it. The Everyperson avoids confrontation with other types of behavior, due to which he can easily share the standpoint of any other archetype; yet in any of his choices he remains a democrat. People realizing in their behavior the archetype of the Everyperson are unwilling to leave many commentaries online, possibly because they simply prefer not to type them in.

Internet memes about food: a system of values and functions

Within the system of meme imagery and narratives about food we clearly discern three interrelated thematic blocks: properties of food quality and origin, characteristics of physiological processes related to eating, and gender relations.

The first block is made up of the following binary oppositions: healthy/unhealthy food, homemade food/fast-food, Mom’s food/food cooked by “your girlfriend”. The right part of each of the contrapositions is more prominent in the number of its signifiers (lexemes). Thus, the semantic group ‘unhealthy food’ is made up of: sausages, grilled chicken, ravioli, fried eggs, cheeseburger, kebab, pizza, fried potato/French fries, fried pork, cola, potato chips, and the most popular ‘unhealthy’ food across all Internet memes – nuggets. ‘Healthy food’ is represented by a limited number of variants: fresh vegetables, fruits, potherbs; the favourite topic here is fresh broccoli/steamed broccoli. Such food is always homemade and mostly by Mom. People eat it in the allowed time of day (during daylight) while the unhealthy food is devoured at night. At the same time the Mom’s healthy food is associated with excessive care, while the unhealthy fast-food – with freedom. These characteristics and the ones below shed some light on the age/sex of the authors of Internet memes about food.

Live beings symbolizing gluttony in the system of imagery of such memes are pig, cat (“cats”), and girl. Gender relations in the Internet memes are represented by the traditional groups that follow:

1) males symbolize moderation, have “good metabolism” and good body shape;

2) females are immoderate in their eating habits, have “bad metabolism” and, as a consequence, excessive body weight.

A man is depicted as the ‘provider’ of food (“I’ll bring you spicy wings”), while a woman is the main ‘consumer’ of it (“I’ll like you still better if you order another helping of … for me”). She is the consuming and not the producing actor, therefore occasional women’s attempts at culinary are estimated by men as unsuccessful; at the same time a young female willingly eats all what her man has procured, which places her in the dependent position within the ‘male’ folklore. In the context of a pandemic we observe the following modifications of this story: a man’s power over a woman is ensured by both a supply of food for several years and by his ownership of a bunker-ark as a place of rescue and seclusion.

This system of images and narratives in today’s Internet memes about food reproduces a number of traditional motives. Similar values were found and identified by Levy-Strauss (2006) when he studied South American myths. Here are some of the key oppositions. Homemade boiled food (cooked in hollow kitchenware) is the symbol of culture; out of door eating of food broiled on a spit in open fire is the symbol of nature and forest life. The very instruments of cooking (kettle/pan – spit) stand as the symbols of the ‘female’ and the ‘male’ (similar connotations found in other cultures). Another pair of meanings that represents culture and nature is the ‘raw’ and the ‘cooked’. Eating raw products without measure is ascribed to a mythological character - woman-cannibal that sticks to a man’s back and parasitizes on him gradually sucking his life out.

Since we would be quite right in assuming that most of the authors of Internet memes have never had any detailed acquaintance with the four volumes of Levy-Strauss’ “Mythologies”, a more justified conjecture is that the fact that we find a similar system of meanings and relations in the Internet folklore might be the result of unperceived creativity, a product of the collective unconscious. Internet memes as artifacts of modern folklore broadcast in the Russian Internet via WWW, represent the traditional logic based on binary oppositions such as indoor – out of door, female – male, moderate – excessive, raw – cooked, etc., to which are added important for the gastronomic culture imperatives like healthy – unhealthy, i.e. are archetypal in their basis.