Culinary-gastronomic Literacy Practices and Social Class: A Comparative Analysis of Restaurants’ Hoardings in Pakistan

Abstract

Background. Hoardings, as a significantly important marketing strategy (King & Devasagayam, 2017) and being part of culinary-gastronomic literacy practices, play an integral role in shaping consumers’ culinary preferences along with frequently reinforcing social class divisions in restaurant discourses. Although the impact of advertising on consumer behaviour is well established, little is known about how restaurant hoardings directly convey social class differences in a stratified society like Pakistan. These hoardings serve as means of promoting restaurants while also communicating values, goals, stratified identities and social standards (Marino, 2018).  Pakistan being a country where social class hierarchies are quite prominent, food consumption is closely associated with both cultural identity and social status (Maqsood, 2014; Mapes, 2018).

Purpose.  Keeping above in view, this study aims to explore how the visual and textual elements as part of culinary-gasttronomic literacy practices of restaurants’ hoardings work in unison yet distinctively in selected restaurants in Pakistan to construct narratives that appeal to different socio-economic groups.

Materials and Methods. The analysis focuses on the culinary-gastronomic literacy practices of four middle-middle class (MMC) and four upper-class (UC) restaurants in Lahore and Islamabad, the two major cities in Pakistan; employing an integrated approach that combines the Grammar of Visual Design (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), the Ideological Model of Literacy (Street, 2003), and the ‘Create-a-Guest’ model (Shamne & Pavlova, 2017).

Results. The results show that middle-middle-class restaurants utilize the culinary literacy practices to project themes of affordability, tradition, and accessibility; while upper-class restaurants employ these to emphasize upon the themes of exclusivity, cosmopolitanism, and luxury to attract targeted clientele.

Conclusion. These insights provide a deeper understanding of how restaurants position and identify themselves within Pakistan’s social hierarchy through distinct use of culinary-gastronomic-literacy practices.