Vicissitude of some gastronomy’s Turcisms in the Slovenian language

Abstract

In the present study we intend to give voice to a short series of lemmas from the corpus of Turcisms identified in Slovenian and belonging to the field of gastronomy. First of all, we want to observe the history of their acquisition in the language and in lexicographic works, which is mainly mediated by Serbo-Croatian. In most cases, the time span is the second half of the 20th century. The second aspect concerns the semantic level of the lemma which, in some cases only, reveals an interesting process of semantic change or degradation. Finally, we will take the opportunity to look at the cultural level and try to understand, in addition to linguistic data, what meanings certain foods reveal in contemporary Slovenian society. Both eating habits and their symbolic function, which is sometimes capable of developing attitudes of exclusion in the face of certain elements of otherness, are taken into account.