Spoken Language Features on Chefs

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Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver are well known television chefs who cook and present different meals which people enjoy to watch. However, both chefs use a range of different language devices and style of speaking to instruct how to cook meals and entertain their viewers using their individual personality. Their spoken language reflects upon their image, audience, purpose and social attitudes. Jamie Oliver successfully uses many language techniques to help him communicate with his audience. He has a very relaxed and informal approach with his audience that features the use of colloquial language, in his opening he greets the audience by saying ‘hi guys’. The use of this technique makes his show more inviting and his distinctive style of speech presents him as a down to earth, friendly TV chef. Additionally, the example above can also be observed as phatic communication because it is a socially significant phrase used to express goodwill rather than to impart information. Due to Oliver’s particular style, the audience think of him as a friend rather than a chef, which builds a circle of trust amongst himself and his viewers. Moreover, Oliver demonstrates many prosodic features in his show. An example of this is his pace which is very quick that he tends to miss out words, often uses a list of three which can also indicate rapid speech and above all are his merged words ‘you gotta get on it’. These examples suggest that Oliver’s pace is always quick as his meals are based mainly on time management, considering his target audience are of a lower social class and very often working class people have very little time to prepare meals. Also, Oliver’s meals are always cost effective, ‘eggs; they’re cheap’ ‘a little goes a long way’ this tells us that that he is aware of his target audience. Based on the purpose to entertain, Lawson displays prosodic and also
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