How does the language in all three recipes change?

Text A is ‘To make a Currey the India Way’, from the Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy in 1747. The most common semantic change in this Text is narrowing. Words such as ‘shovel’ and ‘fowels’ have been narrowed, fowl used to refer to all kinds of birds and now more commonly only to guinea fowl. By recommending the reader to use fowl, it shows the lack of trade between countries during this time as the author is suggesting local produce. Despite this, there are examples of the influence of emerging British Empire and colonisation of India as the recipe includes Coriander Seeds and how the curry is made the ‘India Way’. It was also before standardisation as f is interchangeable with s which is now obsolete, examples of this is ‘foftly’ and ‘obferve’. Another example of obsolete language use is the old subjunctive ‘if the sauce be too thick’. Clipping is also used as ‘Spoonful’ loses the suffix, in addition, it shows a change in how the compound becomes a single word. There is also borrowing such as ‘Currey’ which would be taken from India. Also, ‘India’ in the title is a proper noun being as an adjective which further shows the lack of standardisation. Text A is the most formal of the Texts using verbs such as ‘obferve’, however, Text B also uses formal language such as ‘palatable’ which is considered to be quite archaic language.

Text B is titled ‘No. 3 Economical Pot Liquor soup’ from ‘A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Class’ in 1852. Another similarity between Texts A and B is the evidence of a class hierarchy. A says ‘and fend it to Table’ which insinuates through a servant and B is aimed at the working class. In Text B there are many semantic changes of broadening with words such as ‘fat’ and ‘scum’, however, there is also narrowing in words such as ‘liquor’ which would now refer to an alcoholic beverage. There is also the use of archaic language such as ‘broth’ which is also used dialectally. Another example of the archaic language is adjectives being used differently, ‘found to be too salt’, is not something that would be said in Modern English. This is the only Text to use direct address towards the audience and also the only one with a specific audience. This recipe is aimed at women on a budget and this is shown through the opening sentence being ‘A thrift housewife’. A change in lexis between Texts A and B is a greater awareness of time. In A the language is imprecise as it says ‘ftew it foftly till the meat is enough’ and B says ‘on the fire for about twenty minutes’ showing an advancement in understanding time and possibly technology.

Text C a ‘wan kaj thai-style curry’ from 1998 in ‘Meals in Minutes’ has an entirely different approach as it is cooking food that is in fashion rather than economical for large families on a budget. A similarity between A and C is the use of imperatives but this is one of the only similarities between the two. There has been a large technological advancement between 1747 and 1998. A and B show a lack of technology through phases such as ‘on the fire’ and ‘over the fire’ which shows an apparent lack of oven. Whereas, C uses terminology such as ‘non-stick pan’. Another example of advancement is in the increasing precision of measurements. By 1998 there were exact measurements of 400g of coconut milk whereas A has a ‘large Spoonful’. Text C reflects the society’s desire of being more health conscious as it contains nutrition values which shows more scientific neologisms being present. Another way it reflects society is the smaller number that it serves and how it is aimed at people in a hurry but the detailed instructions show it is also aimed at people who are inexperienced cooks but are cooking for pleasure more than necessity. Examples of the detailed instructions are the increase of adjectives such as ‘gentle simmer’.  The language used is quite elliptical which shows a change as the previous Texts were quite formal.

The sentence structure in A is very minimal. The entire text is split into three sentences which shows the little discourse structure. There is no obvious recipe structure and it is a list laid out on paragraphs. It has a newspaper aesthetic which is a similar graphology to Text B, the capitalisation in Text A adds emphasis to this effect. In addition, they both have long sentences and being laid out in paragraphs. Text C has a completely different graphology which is more easily read which could reflect how it is designed for people in a hurry to cook. C is also the only Text to have a persuasive paragraph previous to recipe showing a change in how people can choose what to cook rather than what they can afford for a large family. The technology advancement also shows as how it can be printed changes the layout. In addition, the changes of fonts at different is a part of the discourse structure and graphological device.