Cooking it up! 3rd PQE

P. Jamie Oliver and Nancy Lam, despite being from different cultural backgrounds, share a lot of similar linguistic features. They use: an informal style of presenting (which extends to their loose views on quantities), the use of non-standard English and use of colloquialisms. Q. ‘You’re catching me aren’t you?’ ‘You can use any pasta really (.) a little parmesan cheese (.) literally (.) that much’ E. Lam uses the rhetorical question to engage with her audience, she intimates that the audience understands her and her style of cooking. Similarly, Jamie shows us ’literally’ the amount of cheese to use. The pauses here show us he is demonstrating and rather than have an exact amount written in a cookbook, he uses the connection of a TV show to illustrate his ingredients to the audience. This is a paralinguistic technique that Lam uses at the beginning of the extract. Their friendly tone creates a positive atmosphere with us as the audience. (Personal response.)