“The Comic and the Rule” in Pastagate: Food, Humor and the Politics of Language in Quebec
2017
Ketterer Hobbis, Stephanie
When the OQLF, Quebec’s language police, ordered an Italian restaurant to use the French “pâtes” instead of “pasta,” Pastagate broke. Initial (global) laughter about the events quickly turned into public outcry resulting, among others, in a partial reform of the OQLF. This article examines the dynamics that drove the scandal and that subsequently engendered political change, and more broadly the intersections of food and language as identity markers and sites of contestation. Based on an analysis of the media discourses that accompanied the scandal in Quebec, Canada and to a lesser degree abroad, the argument is made that Pastagate was able to challenge the status quo because the scandal was both comic and tragic when it questioned the perceived “authenticity” of “foreign” cuisines as well as the nationally grounded identity of the cosmopolitan consumer. An action that was meant to protect Quebec’s national identity undermined a largely uncontroversial source of national distinction, the consumption of the other through their cuisines.
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