COGNITIVE AND PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF LANGUAGE UNITS REPRESENTING FOOD

Food is traditionally considered not only a source of energy that keeps us alive and our body functioning in the correct way. It can also affect our mood greatly and on a more general level it can indicate our preferences, attitude on health and nature. Food can easily identify a person’s social status and culture. Traditions connected with food and certain products are strongly associated with religion, travelings, traditions, our attitude towards food makes us different from many other species. Food in all its elements (products, etiquette, preparation, customs, etc) is by all means, culture specific as it is formed by people and conditioned by the surroundings and all the elements of culture formed being formed through centuries and affected by neighbouring territories, contacts. It is agreed that many cultures a both common and different in what we call food. Today, we can observe two parallel tendencies: people try to maintain culturally specific food customs and simultaneously they also modify them so food customs become either more internationalized or blended (including elements of various cuisines). The world of food becomes truly multicultural. The article discusses linguistic peculiarities of gluttonic discourse, both in its oral and written forms.