To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
REPORT
The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate
1. Background
Our project studied the role of language and communication strategies in the ongoing
intense national discussion of school meals (henceforth ‘the debate’). We looked at media
coverage in 2004-2007, and views of parents, pupils and key players in 2007. The aim was to
further understanding of a matter of intrinsic social and educational importance, while also
developing methods for the discourse analysis of public debate.
UK school meals provision is a political issue highlighting disagreement over the roles of the
state, the market and the family in children’s welfare (Webster 1997, Gillard 2003). The 1944
Education Act made the provision of nutritional school meals a statutory duty for local
authorities. This obligation continued until 1980, when the Thatcher government abolished
the minimum nutritional standards, obliging local authorities to introduce competitive
tendering. Although the New Labour governments of 1997 onwards took some action to
reverse this (DfES 2001), provision remained mainly in private hands, and any improvement
difficult in view of low budgets.
Concern to improve the quality of food in UK schools had been evident in the early 2000s
(Harvey 2000, Scottish Executive 2002, Morgan 2004), but the issue became the subject of
heated public and political concern following four TV programmes Jamie’s School Dinners
presented by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in 2005 (Oliver 2005). The series occasioned
intense press coverage, comment at prime-ministerial level, discussion in the British Medical
Journal (Spence 2005), increased agitation by NGOs (Caroline Walker Trust 2005, Sustain
2005, Corporate Watch 2006), and grass-roots campaigns in and around schools. There
followed a major statutory reform of the content of school meals (School Meals Review
Panel 2005). Interest moreover has not been short-lived, as for some media-driven issues.
‘The Jamie Oliver effect’ is still evident, and our findings are therefore of continuing
relevance and timeliness.
The debate has taken place against a context of national and international concern over
sustainable production, distribution and consumption of food for a burgeoning world
population (Robbins 2001, Nestle 2003, Lien and Nerlich 2004). Problems of food
distribution and storage have been addressed through intensive food processing, often
involving additives, and by a complex network of food transportation. In children’s food,
intense competition among manufacturers and caterers has led to a focus upon seductive
taste enhancement, easy availability and low cost, rather than nutrition and health, or the
development of children’s appreciation of good-quality food and the cultural traditions
around its preparation and consumption.
2. Objectives
Like many contemporary interactions around social change, the debate brings together
diverse interest groups whose discourses, agendas and epistemologies are potentially
incommensurable: parents, children, teachers, school governors, caterers, suppliers, retailers,
nutritionists, environmentalists, broadcasters, journalists, celebrity chefs, religious authorities,
14
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
policy makers. Such interactions inevitably create dangers of misunderstanding, illusory
agreement, or unnecessary conflict.
Our aim was to describe some of the linguistic and rhetorical choices made within the
debate, the reasoning behind them, and reactions to them. Through dissemination of our
findings we seek to improve understanding of issues relating to school meals, contribute to
policy, and facilitate communication between stakeholders. We seek also to contribute to
the development of a discourse-analytic method integrating corpus linguistic, interview and
focus-group data, and to communicate this method and its advantages to other researchers
through academic conferences and publications.
With these aims in mind, we addressed the following research questions:
1. what are the key characteristics of language use in the debate, what motivates this
language use, and what is its effect?
2. how does the language of the debate influence policy decisions and public opinion?
3. which issues are of greatest concern to which groups of stakeholders and how is this
reflected in the language and genres used in the debate?
Under each of these general questions, we focused upon specific issues which emerged
during our research
1. vague, emotive and evaluative description; use and meaning of the word Jamie
2. Jamie Oliver’s use of language
3. parental concern over understanding and provision of religious diets, especially halal
3. Methods
By integrating corpus and detailed textual analysis with a focus on writer and reader
perspectives revealed through focus groups and interviews, we sought to analyse the words
of the debate in the context of participants’ communicative intentions and reactions rather
than our own analysts’ readings and assumptions (Stubbs 1996, Widdowson 2004, Wodak et
al. 1999). This methodology has been developed in a series of projects examining the
discourse of debates about food (Nyyssonnen et al 1998-2000; Cook, Robbins and Pieri
2001-2002; Cook, Robbins and Pieri 2003; Cook, Reed, Robbins and Twiner 2006), and
children’s interactions around food and the communication of family values (Gillen and
Hancock 2006a, 2006b).
3.1 Data
Five datasets were collected:
1. A corpus of over 1.7 million words divided into four main categories: relevant
articles from newspapers with different styles and political stances (Times, Guardian,
Sun, Daily Mail) between September 2004 and October 2007; materials produced by
campaign and commercial organisations (catering organisations, charities, NGOs,
supermarkets), schools and authorities (schools, councils, government departments,
regulatory bodies); transcripts of Jamie’s School Dinners. (Appendix 2)
2. Transcriptions and recordings of nine focus groups (96, 479 words) representing
parents of secondary (2 groups) and primary (2 groups) school pupils from multi15
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
and predominately mono-ethnic communities; and pupils from multi- and
predominately mono-ethnic secondary (2 groups) and primary (3 groups) schools.
Focus groups discussed concerns around school meals, and commented on sample
school menus and information. Pupils also reflected on an extract from Jamie’s School
Dinners. (Appendix 3)
3. Transcriptions and recordings of interviews with 22 stakeholders responsible for
communicating and disseminating messages about school meals, including catering
organisations, campaign organisations, charities and schools (170, 303 words).
(Appendix 4)
4. Questionnaires from a) pupils in a Lancashire secondary school; b) parents in a
North London primary school (Appendix 5)
5. Field notes of participant observation at conferences and trade events (Appendix 6)
6. Online asynchronous and synchronous discussions about school meals with
teenagers in the Schome Park project centred on a ‘Teen Second Life’ 3D virtual
world (Gillen & the Schome Community, 2007) (Appendix 8)
3. 2 Data Analysis
Corpus analysis software (Wordsmith 4) identified frequent words and collocations, and
statistically significant ‘keywords’ (Scott 2005). This prompted selection of documents and
extracts for closer textual analysis. Focus groups and interviews were coded using qualitative
software (Atlas.ti), allowing themes and key issues to be identified that would not necessarily
emerge through quantitative linguistic analysis. Full transcription of focus groups and
interviews enabled attention to linguistic detail (Myers 2004:44).
4. Results
4.1 Language
4.1.1 Vagueness
The language of descriptions and discussions of school meals is characterised by vagueness
(Channell 1994; Cutting 2007), appeal to emotions, and a binary opposition the ‘good’ and
the ‘bad’. Thus items in reformed menus (or those from an idealised past) are frequently
described as
fresh(ly prepared)
healthy/ier
homemade
traditional
Such vague terms belong to the register of casual conversation, where precision is not always
needed, trust prevails, and participants can seek clarification as required. In a move
described by Fairclough (1989:62) as “synthetic personalisation” (a tendency “to give the
impression of handling each of the people handled en masse as an individual”), however, they
16
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
are also increasingly favoured in marketing, where their capacity to generate multiple
interpretations can be exploited to the communicator’s advantage, as astutely recognised by
some of our interviewees:
I think terms like fresh, quality, variety, standards, mean different things in a
household context and in an institutional context and certainly in a catering context
(primary headteacher)
and exploited by others
when I, you know when I’m trying to sell something in a newsletter, I will say that
it’s only fresh ingredients, fresh vegetables and no additives and nothing frozen,
(primary headteacher)
Our interviews and focus groups suggest that while such words may be understood in their
imprecise everyday senses by members of the public, they are used more precisely by caterers
and campaigners. The term homemade, for example, though used frequently in school menus
cannot apply literally to something prepared in a school kitchen, and is therefore to be
understood, when used about food made outside the home, in a much looser sense.
Caterers however have more precise ideas
there’s a difference between ‘homemade’, and ‘homebaked’ …’homemade’ is from scratch
so that every ingredient is made from, you know, there we are, there’s 10 ingredients and
you’re going to make a dish. ‘Homebaked’, could be something that is partly made up, like
a sponge mix, and all you’ll do is add in water, so it becomes ‘homebaked’ (Irene Carroll,
Local Authorities Catering Association (LACA))
though not always the same ones as each other
so if you’re saying something’s homemade then they actually know the person that has
made it, known them for many years in some cases (Tony McKenna, Caterlink)
or as their audience
when you see homemade you think small quantities not into thousands (mother of
secondary pupil)
There is clearly a potential for misunderstanding here, when communicators impose precise
meanings upon inherently imprecise words, but without informing their audience. We have
encountered similar claims and conflicting interpretations of other frequent words such as
local, traditional, fresh (see Appendix 10).
4.1.2 Metonymy
Vague words denoting ‘good food’ contrast in discussion with equally vague words denoting
‘bad food’:
junk
processed
high calorie
17
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
This binary opposition is also furthered through metonymy. Thus certain foods stand for
unhealthy, high calorie diets, and others for the opposite. Thus in Jamie’s School Dinners
burger(s)
pizza(s) and chips
turkey twizzlers
smileys
nuggets
(all frequent and key words) are used to signify the whole category ‘junk food’ (and some of
these uses are echoed in our focus-group data) while
focaccia
(also a frequent and key word) represents the opposite. Throughout our data, Jamie Oliver’s
name is used metonymically too.
4.1.3 The word Jamie and its meaning
Jamie Oliver’s importance in the debate is reflected in the prevalence and grammatical
behaviour of the word Jamie in our corpus. There are 3159 occurrences in our 1.5 millionword newspaper corpus - one every 470 words - making it the fifth most common content
word, preceded only by meal(s), school(s), child(ren), and food. It also appears as the fifth
keyword (against the ‘BNC baby’ written component as a reference corpus) following the
same four words, and above dinners, pupils, and kids.
The word does more than refer to an individual, and this is reflected not only in its wide use,
but in its grammatical forms. (Though these permutations can happen with any name, they
are notable with this one.) It occurs for example as a countable noun with a plural form,
both as a descriptor of supporters of the campaign
How can we guarantee more Jamies in future?
(Guardian 14/03/05)
and dissenters
Now anecdotes reach us of a spate of incidents involving children in south London who
have injured themselves while trying to escape their school, over the locked gates, in
search of burgers and chips. The staff on the accident and emergency ward have taken to
referring to them as "Jamies", as in, "We've got another Jamie, hurt himself falling from the
school fence".
(The Guardian 03/10/06)
It frequently functions as a pre-modifier in the structure
the Jamie Oliver + NP
18
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
The commonest such phrase is the Jamie Oliver effect (with a positive discourse prosody),
matched by a less frequent derogatory counterpart the Jamie Oliver bandwagon (with a negative
discourse prosody [Stubbs 2002:65-66]). Other common instances of the same construction
include
the Jamie Oliver campaign/impact/issue/meals/menu/odyssey/outcry/
phenomenon/revolution/row/schools/syndrome.
Here Jamie Oliver schools means ‘reformed schools’ and Jamie Oliver meals ‘healthy meals’.
Similar uses of the word Jamie were found among our interviewees and focus groups.
when we had like these other meals, we had Jamie Oliver meals, then we liked them for a
bit and then the cooks just decided to cook all the other usual stuff. (male primary pupil)
I liked it when they did the Jamie Oliver meals. (female primary pupil)
the Jamie Oliver stuff .... the Jamie Oliver thing (parents of primary and secondary pupils)
As Evans (2006:2) observes
mass media images and representations of famous people, stars and celebrities are
vehicles for the creation of social meaning. A celebrity always represents more than him- or
herself.
In line with this view, the word Jamie in our data carries (like Posh, Britney etc.) a large
semantic load, signifying a new composite concept. Talbot (2007a) emphasises Oliver’s
complex gender identity, “to some extent feminised, and often shown with children, friends
and family .... shown being demonstrative and affectionate with both male and female
colleagues” while also “disciplining the dinner ladies” in the male preserve of army barracks
(where he takes them for training!) and playing the hero with an “epic task” of changing first
school, then regional, then government policy (see also Talbot 2007b). This interpretation
of Oliver as hero is borne out by our data, where he is described 47 times in our newspaper
corpus as a “hero”, 25 times as a “saint”, and 4 times as “Sir Jamie” (though he is not). The
fact that some references are ironic
Souper hero, Sun 12/03/05
Sir Jamie, a legend in his own lunchtime, Daily Mail, 30/03/05
Forget Saint Jamie, the man is a foul-mouthed Christ. The Times 17/03/05
does not undermine this interpretation, but demonstrates writers’ awareness of this role.
This distribution and varied uses of the word Jamie reflect the extraordinary power and
success of his campaign
When you say school dinners the first thing that comes into my mind is Jamie
Oliver and him kind of changing everything. (male primary pupil)
4.2 Jamie Oliver’s language
19
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
Although we surveyed a wide range of genres (see dataset 1) the frequent reference to Jamie
Oliver across this corpus as a whole, and explicit commentary on his effect, led us to pay
particular attention to the language and rhetoric of Jamie’s School Dinners, and the ways in
which its themes and language are echoed or taken up (or not) elsewhere in our data. The
genre of celebrity-chef TV show, supplemented by Oliver’s books and website, was clearly
much more successful than other genres, such as reports and articles, in effecting change.
As applied linguists interested in persuasive language a major impetus for our project has
been to understand why Oliver’s communication proved so successful and through this
process to gain wider insights into the nature of persuasion in contemporary society - and
this is the topic of an article in preparation.
While Oliver’s presentation is multimodal, reliant upon non-linguistic factors such as the
chef’s appearance, our concern has been mainly with his language. His style is relentlessly
colloquial and informal, with frequent swearing. His opening summary of the origins of the
school meals crisis is typical
The thing about school dinners is this, right. Twenty years ago the government gave up
responsibilities for the nutrition and kind of dealings of school dinners, right. And basically
what’s happened is in the last twenty years the food has just gone down and down and
down, to what we have now which is basically an absolute shit fight.
Features here, such as the colloquial use of right as an understanding check (Carter and
McCarthy 2006:136), the stance marker basically (ibid. 222), the intensifying superlative
absolute (ibid 770) and the swear word shit, occur throughout the programmes. The words
fuck(ing), shit, veg, honestly, absolutely are all keywords (see appendix 2).
Oliver also evokes nostalgia by introducing child words (eggy bread, a whacking great dollop) and
words current in the 1950s/1960s (dinners instead of meals, dinner ladies instead of e.g. meals
supervisors, grub instead of food etc.). Although Oliver is marketed as youthful, and perceived
as such by parents, for whom his language choices function as an involvement strategy
(Gumperz 1982; Tannen 2007), pupils perceive him as an interfering older person.
4.2.1 “A normal bloke” style and strategy
Colloquial language reinforces Oliver’s rhetorical strategy of denying both his own
persuasive skills, and his own extraordinary position in society, presenting himself instead as
a ‘simple’ man of the people, lacking in confidence and educational success:
Even if a raving idiot (which I was at school) does the sums you can see that putting money
in NOW is the way forward....
I was … secretly I was quite stressed about it, oh, the last two weeks. Haven’t been
sleeping properly the last week just … didn’t know what the kids would be like, didn’t know
what the head mistress was going to be like, didn’t know what Nora was going to be like.
So now lovely, got my bit, now I can get on with it, I can be a normal bloke.
Yet his use of language is in fact anything but unskilled, as we can see if we set out the
quotation above using a technique (developed by Tannen 2007) for revealing phonological,
lexical and grammatical parallelisms
20
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
I was …
I was
secretly
quite stressed about it, oh,
Haven’t been
sleeping properly
didn’t know what
didn’t know what
didn’t know what
the kids
the head mistress
Nora
So now – lovely now I can
I can
got my bit,
get on with it,
the last two weeks.
the last
week just …
would
be like,
was going to be like,
was going to be like.
be a normal bloke.
Even where parallelism is not as marked as in the above, much of Oliver’s discourse,
nevertheless has a poetic quality,
Tonight was a great night and it’s all smiles
but, you know, when I go to bed tonight
it’s going to be very much right, where’s fifth gear,
and is there anything … is there any such thing
as sixth and seventh gear? But I must get back,
I’m twenty minutes late for my wife
because it’s a Sunday isn’t it and it’s her weekend.
So love ya, leave ya, and I’ll see you in the morning.
Just as this multimillionaire superstar is very far from being the “normal bloke” of his
persona, so his rhetorical style is far from the artless spontaneity it claims for itself. Indeed,
despite its contemporary and improvised ‘feel’, Oliver’s style can be analysed and described
in terms of traditional poetics and rhetoric. In Aristotelian terms it is a classic example of
ethos (argument by appeal to the good character of the speaker), delivered in the ‘plain style’,
with the ‘deliberative’ purpose of influencing future events (Vickers 1988:18-26). His
authority and credibility derive partly from his reputation as a cook, and partly from the
complex persona - tender father, good friend, loving husband - relying also on a charismatic
presence in which manner, appearance, humour, and language - mark him out as an alternative
to established authority. Our parent focus-group responses to him suggest that, in the
context of a loss of trust in those - such as scientists, business leaders and elected politicians
- who should be able to speak with authority (Cook et al 2006), and in the presence of
complex arguments (for example about nutrition) which hearers may have neither time nor
expertise to evaluate, there is a public demand for a voice which can be trusted. Jamie Oliver
provides such a voice - and this is perhaps a main reason for his and other celebrities’
rhetorical success.
4.3 An issue of concern to stakeholders: Religious diets.
The vagueness in Oliver’s colloquial language and school menus and caterers’
communications, contrasts sharply with the precision demanded in other communications
about food, such as allergy warnings, nutritional guidelines, or where the use of a word, (e.g.
‘organic’) is legally defined. As already noted, misunderstanding and conflict can arise when
a term is used in a precise sense by some participants, but vaguely by others. Analysis of our
data suggests that such a misunderstanding has arisen in an area of particular current
21
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
controversy and concern, namely religious diets. In this section we focus upon the use and
(mis)interpretation of a keyword in our focus-group data, halal.
However, despite the concern within many schools about religious diets, it has been
singularly neglected in the media, official discourse, and by campaigners. Articles about
school meals in the Guardian and Times mentioned religion only in the context of the
disproportionate free school-meals eligibility in faith schools as an indicator of relatively low
incomes for their intake families. Throughout Jamie’s School Dinners no mention at all was
made of religion, despite the multi-ethnic composition of the school where it was set.
Neither the word halal nor religion/religious appear on the Soil Association’s Food for Life
website, and only tangentially (in the context of aid to Pakistan) on the relevant UK
government’s DfES websites.
This general neglect is reinforced in the discourse of the school-meal reform lobby by an
appeal to cuisines of either a more monocultural Britain of the past (“My mum and her mum
before her cooked good, honest, light, plain English food such as roasts and casseroles”
[Orrey 2005:46]) or continental Europe. One may speculate, in the light of our evidence of
division of opinion over religious diets in schools (see below), that such avoidance may be
motivated, consciously or subconsciously, by a desire to avoid controversy. A further
motive may be the incompatibility of organic and halal meat: Halal slaughter practices do not
meet the current animal-welfare requirements for organic certification.
A questionnaire survey of parents in an ethnically diverse North London primary school
revealed strong opposing views on halal among Muslims, white British, and other religious
minorities:
The school should provide halal food for example halal meat, chicken, sausages, so that
Muslim children can have more variety to eat. (Muslim parent)
no HALAL please (White British parent)
Our son likes to eat meat (chicken, lamb and pork) but is unable to eat the halal meat….
Being Sikhs, we feel our son’s choice is severely restricted. I do also believe that Hindus
also feel uneasy at being offered halal. (Sikh parent)
A key issue in this controversy is different understandings of the term halal itself, which does
not relate only to methods of slaughter (as many non-Muslims in our focus groups believed),
but includes prohibitions such as non-contact with haram (forbidden) foods. This latter
aspect of halal provision is misunderstood by many caterers and schools, who believe they
are providing a halal option if meat comes from a halal source. As Muslim parents
explained:
… someone went and asked a question and they said, oh no we don’t change hands, same
things, … that’s when you start thinking, at some point your cheese and onion pasty has
been touched with the meat and potato pie. (mother of primary pupil).
It’s like Subway in town centre now, I never go in, my niece took me there and they say that
they changed their gloves, but he didn’t he actually made a sandwich which he touched the
cut meat and then he touched the cheese with his hand and I said, no, we took it but we
threw it away because he didn’t change the gloves and he touched haram and he touched
22
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
a piece of cheese and salad and everything, so for us it is all haram that. (mother of primary
pupil)
Such mistrust leads to children being forbidden to consume food offered as halal, and with
reduced take-up, over time the demand for it becomes inadvertently underestimated. These
parents suggested that reassurance that halal provision was actually compliant, achieved
through dialogue with religious community leader or knowledgeable parents invited to visit
the kitchen, could lead to enhanced take-up and improved understanding of halal food. For
those following a religious diet it is insufficient to expect government school-meal standards
to be the only voice of authority.
religion as a tool to talk about health and sustainability, is very powerful especially if it’s,
well, it’s only credible if it comes from people who are within the religion, … somebody that
the community will look up to (Zeenat Anjari, Sustain: the alliance for better food and
farming)
We found similar misunderstanding, and consequent lack of take-up, in schools’ use of
the word ‘vegetarian’ in ways which do not conform to the demands of some vegetarian
Hindus.
Whatever their growing understanding and appreciation of religious requirements, the
children themselves do not have their parents or religious leaders to guide them toward
acceptable food choices at school.
But I’m not exactly meant to eat like, I don’t know because I am sort of Jewish but I don’t
exactly always go by the rules, but I am not exactly allowed to eat pork. (female primary
pupil)
This ten year old girl is positioning herself and constructing aspects of her identity (Beech
2008; Goffman 1961) regarding her religion and eating patterns. She knows the
requirements not to eat pork, but does not necessarily view this as compulsory. For parents
wanting their children to follow a religious diet, such flexibility can be a concern as their
child becomes encultured within the school environment.
In contrast with media neglect of the topic, the influence of religion on diet was readily
discussed by interviewees and focus-group members. Some believe there is little demand for
schools to cater for religious diets:
some schools would have one or two children that I presume either choose not to eat the
whole food that we provide or they’re quite happy with the food (Strategy Manager, Food in
Schools)
and such beliefs appear to have a history:
I can remember when I was at school, Muslim children were chips, beans, or chips, and fish
and chips or something like that. (mother of secondary pupil)
muslims won want to always have the veggie option (pupil in Teen Second Life,
orthography preserved)
23
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
The new standards for school meals in England, including restriction on fried foods for
sound nutritional reasons, can eliminate this 'failsafe' option.
It would be wrong, however, to suggest that caterers and schools are not considering
religious communities in designing school menus. Where a market for religious meals is
apparent and the driver for such provision internal to the school, this becomes a priority:
for the head teacher it was extremely important to serve the cultural and religious needs of
his pupils. Brent has a high ethnic minority population, I think it's ethnic majority population
in fact (Zeenat Anjari, Sustain)
Proposed solutions range from eliminating certain meats; providing all or no halal meat to
prevent confusion; providing a vegetarian option for pupils with restrictions on meats.
However, whatever policies are adopted or rejected in this complex area, our data suggests
that improvements in communication might lead to better uptake. (See Output).
4.4 Recommendations
Schools, caterers and campaigners should be more precise in their descriptions of food, and
endeavour to clarify their use of terms to parents and pupils. As commercial bodies will
inevitably continue to use the vague language of marketing, children’s education about food
should include attention to the imprecision of such descriptions, and develop discrimination
between factual information and vague description.
Differences of opinion over the provision of religious diets should be addressed by schools,
caterers, campaigners and authorities, and, as a prelude to policy decisions in this area, policy
makers at all levels should develop their own understanding of key terms such as halal.
5. Activities
Attendance at
x Conferences in ‘Outputs’.
x Westminster Diet and Health Forum: Parents, Children and 'Healthy Living', 2006
x Soil Association Conference, Cardiff, 2007
x School cooks’ training kitchen, Gloucestershire Food Vision, 2007
x Organic Products Europe Trade Fair, Olympia, 2007
x Economic and Social Data Service: 'Cooking numbers and eating words’, Leeds,
2007
x Supermarkets debate, Hay festival 2007
6. Outputs
x
x
x
Article (Cook, Gillen, Twiner) on the language of Jamie Oliver in preparation for
Discourse and Society or Text and Talk
Article (lead author Twiner) Overlooked issues of religious identity in the school
dinners debate. Under review British Educational Research Journal
Article (lead author Gillen) The Friday phenomenon: contradictions in the UK
school dinners debate, in preparation for Food, Culture and Society
24
To cite this output:
Cook, Guy et al (2008). The Discourse of the School Dinners Debate: Full Research Report
ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-1947. Swindon: ESRC
REFERENCE No. RES-000-22-1947
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Article commissioned for special issue of Language Policy
Talk, Hay Festival 2007 (Cook)
University of Southampton Centre for Applied Language Research annual public
lecture (on this and earlier projects) 13/2/2008 (Cook).
University of Leeds Language and the Public Interest annual lecture(on this and earlier
projects) 6/3/2008 (Cook)
Contribution to colloquium AAAL (American Association for Applied Linguistics)
conference 2008
Web site http://creet.open.ac.uk/projects/language-of-food-politics
Leaflet (appendix 9)
Proposed paper: “I’m having on my tombstone: ‘he got a daily fresh vegetable on the
school menu’”: the UK school dinners debate (Gillen, Cook, Twiner), International
Society for Cultural and Activity Research Congress, San Diego, September 2008.
Paper proposed for BAAL (British Association for Applied Linguistics) conference,
2008 (Cook, Twiner, Gillen)
Invited presentation, Literacy Research Discussion Group, Lancaster University,
November 2008 (Cook, Twiner, Gillen)
Plenary invitation: applied linguistics and food politics, AAAL 2009 (Cook)
7. Impacts
x
x
x
x
Findings requested by: Gloucestershire Food Vision, Dorset Food and Land Trust,
Food Links UK, Sustain, Food for Life, LACA, Caterlink, Scolarest, schools
involved, Food Writers’ Guild, Organic Farmers and Growers.
Briefing to Soil Association (Cook, Twiner) 02/05/08
Briefing to LACA (Gillen and Twiner) 04/04/08
Advice given to 'Nutrition in Northern Ireland schools' project (Mar-July 08) funded
by Department of Education Northern Ireland and Health Promotion Agency.
8. Future Research Priorities
x
x
Ethnic and religious differences in food-politics debates.
Developing children’s critical awareness of language in food descriptions?
9. Ethics
Research was conducted in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the British
Association for Applied Linguistics and the British Educational Research Association
and the Open University Code of Good Practice in Research, see:
http://www.baal.org.uk/about_goodpractice_full.pdf
http://www.bera.ac.uk/publications/guides.php
http://www.open.ac.uk/research-school/Documents/CodeGoodPracRes.pdf
Care has been taken to respect the confidentiality of focus-group informants, of interviewees
where requested, and to maintain independence and impartiality.
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