On the semiotics of Iranian Muckbang-cookbang discourse: from creation to co-creation of brand values

AbstractThe Muckbang discourse, as digital commensality, depicts the preparation of food (Cookbang) or eating food (Muckbang) by an influencer in the presence of other users. This trend is considered as a tool for spreading Korean food tradition as an essential part of the Hallyu or "Korean wave." Through indirect means as well as the interaction of influencers with social network users, the Korean wave of Hallyu has been recontextualized in Iran in its own particular way. In this connection, as it concerns Iranian brand values, discovering the implicit levels of meaning-making in Muckbang or the Korean wave of Hallyu in Iran requires adopting and applying an interpretive multidisciplinary approach. The research corpus consists of all Muckbang-cookbangs that were purposefully selected by considering the meaning-making mechanisms of food culture system. Employing an integrated model for data analyses, the results indicated that the cultural codes of food in Iranian Muckbang-cookbang discourse represents the value of food brands through and in terms of the type of food, the style of eating and preparing. The results suggest that concerning food type, the Muckbang discourse of native Iranians particularly includes the consumption of unpleasant food, flavor-enhanced food, and crunchy and fresh food. Besides, Iranian Muckbang discourse also includes the consumption of some non-native foods such as squid, crabs, and calamari. The examination of written interactions revealed that some users and followers encouraged other users to accept the Hallyu wave by weakening the local cultural structures and enriching the elements of the global Hallyu wave. This is while another group of users avoided accepting this trend by maintaining and preserving the local traditional elements. In Muckbang discourse, the eating style often stimulates the senses of users with amplified sounds, challenging them to overeat, binging, and eating alone or in pairs. Depending on the type of eating, Iranian Muckbangs include eating with amplified sound, overeating, and fast eating challenges, often performed in person or in pairs. Finally, Cookbang discourse in Iran includes selecting and preparing food from foreign countries, especially East Asia, depending on their origins, communicating current and modern fast food in line with McDonald's global trends, and finally recontextualizing the recipes of traditional Iranian foods based on historical narratives.Keywords: Muckbang, Cookbang, Hallyu Korean wave, social network marketing, food cultural system, Iran. IntruductionEating is practiced not only to fulfil biological needs and to be nourished, but also to be involved in a social activity (Choe, 2021: 137; Beeman, 2014; Kerner et al., 2015). In most cultures, eating together is considered a valued activity. In Korean culture, "loneliness" means "without anyone" (Choe et al., 2015; Kim, 2018). With this in mind, albeit many young Koreans live alone and independently, they have used digital technology innovatively to meet the need for communal eating (Choe, 2019). The importance of the collective act of eating in traditional Korean culture has led to the emergence of the Muckbang discourse in cyberspace. Muckbang was created with an aim to preserve the sense of collective eating in an online forum, so that the new generation, who are forced to live a modern lifestyle, would not suffer emotional damage. To put it more clearly, Muckbang is a new method of online social activity to satisfy the need for collective eating (Choe et al., 2015). Based on this, Muckbang is a type of digital commensality- collective eating - where a person eats in the presence other users (Beeman, 2014; Eleftheriou-Smith, 2017). Then all viewers share their views and ideas to start an online interaction in a live virtual space.The Hallyu trend was first introduced in 2010 by Muckbang presenters and on the Korean live video platform known as Africa TV. Since then, It has widely and globally spread to other areas across the world over time (Kim, 2018). This new form of Muckbang motivates the sensory stimulation of viewers. Interestingly, it is known as "food porn" in Western cultures with visual representations of food and hearing food sounds (Song, 2023).The identification of the strategic aspects of Muckbang discourse, as a new genre of influential marketing in the cultural or creative industries (Yu, 2022), is spreading across the globe through social networks (Khamis et al., 2017: 191-208). According to De Veirman et. al., (2017: 798-824), Muckbang has also provided a platform for more intimate relationships with consumers. This has not only increased brand identity awareness and professional brand equity building, but also has created a comfortable understanding of brand identity among loyal and potential customers (De Veirman et al., 2017).Over time, with the interactive capabilities of the social network improved, the Muckbang discourse, as an essential part of the Korean Hallyu wave (Chu, 2018), has not only found the possibility of transformation and continuous life, but also has grown with flexibility and the change of its original form to permeate to different cultures in different ways. In constant interaction with global users, this strategic trend in modern marketing, has either led to a change in their attitude or to overcome non-native opponents in a conservative and flexible way and try to gain more credibility. In today's Iran, grounded upon the processes of globalization, the Korean Hallyu wave has on the one hand spread in virtual spaces and led to the creation of value in the process of interacting with users and on the other hand contributed to the restoration of the Korean cultural system. Changing the cultural codes of Iranian food, this mysterious current has prepared the ground for the formation of a new wave with a constructed identity that has adopted elements from Iranian food system. Presenting the influential aspects of this current in the local food system has undoubtedly led us to discover the hidden or at least implicit layers of this current in Iran. In this context, we intend to analyze the discourse of this current from the emergence of Korean Hallyu wave to the spread of global Muckbang wave to the localized Muckbang in Iran. On this basis, we will try to answer the following question: "How does the Korean Hallyu wave represent the indigenous Iranian Muckbang food culture system in the process of co-creating the value of Iranian food tokens?"The structure of the paper is as follows: First, we will overview the current literature on the subject. Second, we will outline the research methodology. Third, we will embark upon analyzing the Muckbang and Cookbang flow. Finally, we will discuss and conclude the findings. Materials and MethodsThe data for the present research is collected using documentary method. Our data mainly come form multiple resources of Muckbang on social networks, extending from May 2022 to April 2023.Thus said, firstly, through browsing the Instagram pages of Muckbang-cookbang, we randomly examined more than 350 posts to check for their appropriacy with our research objectives. With regard to the discourse of Muckbang-cookbang as an observable recurring code - showing higher degree of spontaneity and creativity-, we purposefully opted for one movie for Muckbang and another for Cookbang to represent the cultural systems of Iranian food.Taking into account the levels of interactive meaning-making, the sample is studied using an integrated corpus-based model examining the meaning-making processes of brand discourse in the value-creation process. The expression level includes the possible structures of the social network for systematic meaning-making. The content level describes the meaning-making procedures of the social network discourse based on the levels of inter- and intra-semiotics. At the context level, the re-semiotization of non-textual elements considered. At the level of user interaction, users' comments or written conversations on the Muckbang-cookbang discourse are examined.    Creation of brand valueExpression of brand valueCo-occurance situational discourseNonuccurance situational contextContext of culture (socio-cultural semosphere; cultura l) values) Discourse of contextInterpretation of brand valueMuckbang discourse           Co-creation of brand value                    user's surface                                            context surface                                  content surface                    expression surface  Figure 1- An overview of the integrated research model Taken together, these functional perspectives comprise a powerful toolkit for doing a socially relevant, multimodal discourse analysis. After the research corpus is studied using the adopted analytical research model, the descriptive statistical methods will be applied to shed light on a number of issues or problem areas in the integrated model. Discussion of Results and ConclusionsThe Muckbang-Cookbang movement in Iran has mysteriously resulted in cultural structures adopted both from Korean origins and through global trends. In this context, the influencer, relying on his/her credibility, presents the value of the advertised brand with the help of Mockbank. The represented value of the brand in Muckbang's discourse was to show the provocative effect of foods that sometimes conflict with the local culture and, in some cases, to reweave the local cultural elements in conjunction with the Korean Hallyu craze to encourage followers to accept the cultural elements of the global Hallyu trend. In the process of value creation, the meaning of the brand discourse was examined based on the styles of eating and consuming. Likewise, the value creation process of and the Cookbang discourse was grounded upon on food preparation (Barthes, 1967; Danesi, 2006) and (Sujudi, 2008; Agha Ebrahimi, 2015).In relation to the type of Muckbang foods (Yun et al., 2020; Kim et al., 2016), it was found that the flow of native Iranian Muckbang, unlike Korean and Chinese Muckbang, does not contain raw foods, living organisms, and any kinds of insects. It is often limited to some seafood, the most important of which are octopus, crab and lobster. In Iranian Muckbangs, the consumption of foods such as octopus, crab, and calamari has led to a hegemonic interaction; in this interaction, Mookbanker encourages his followers to eat unfamiliar and non-native foods through emotional stimulation. After continuing the written conversation about eating such non-Iranian foods by users, their normalization begins by weakening the local cultural structures and strengthening the elements of the global Hallyu wave to lead to the acceptance of this current among Iranian users. In line with the global trend of eating foods with a flavor enhancement, Iranian muckbangers include very sour foods in addition to spicy Korean noodles. In addition to eating crispy crackers, Iranian muckbang also includes hot pots, dry bread, as well as traditional foods and even fresh vegetable products in some cases.In the context of how food is eaten in muckbangs, in line with the findings of (Yun et al., 2020; Haghbin and Monfard, in press), it was found that Iranian Muckbangs - in line with the global challenge to eat a lot of raw eggs or fried potatoes, soukhari chicken and similar things - are sometimes performed with a certain time record and a prize. In some cases, this challenge is contested by two people. Koreans hear sounds such as swallowing, chewing, sucking, slurping, gulping and slurping while eating. This is while most Iranian MucKbangs involve fried foods and macaroni, where the sound of crunchy food can be heard. Donad and in some cases chewing and swallowing sounds can be heard, which is not annoying.Finally, in addition to the findings of (Yun et al., 2020), it was found that Kukbang, which represents the preparation of food and its consumption in front of the user with a sense of intimacy and comfort, arouses emotions and creates pleasure related to food, which may lead to overconsumption and unhealthy eating. The trend of Cookbang in Iran is to select and cook Korean or national foods with reference to their origin and history, which often correspond to Iranian tastes. Cookbang also involves teaching practical and contemporary methods for traditional Iranian foods and similar products, which is accompanied by the revival of historical narratives and, in some cases, myths. In this way, the adoption of the Korean wave of Hallyu occurs along with the reconstruction of historical elements in the form of narratives, indicating the influence of the collective action of online eating in the lower strata of Iranian culture

Aspectual System in Luri and its Dialects

In this paper, we have analysed the aspectual system of three dialects of Luri, a west Iranian language which is spoken in south western, and in some areas of western part of Iran. About the classification of Luri dialects different opinions have been provided by various scholars. In this research, we follow Anonby (2003)’s classification, who has considered Luri as a language continuum consisting of three distinct languages: Luristani, Bakhtiyari and southern Luri, but we call them dialects of Luri. Despite their similarities to standard Persian, the Luri dialects share features that set them apart as a group from the standard language (McKinon, 2011). In this research, we have looked at the verbal construction in Luri and its aspectual system. Aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation' (Comrie, 1976:4). Hewson & Bubenik (1997:14) distinguish analytic and synthetic aspects in the Indo- European languages. In analytic aspect, there is an auxiliary which carries the tense marker, to which the lexical verb is dependant. On the other hand, in synthetic aspect, there is only a single word which may be marked for both tense and aspect. In these three West Iranian dialects, there are synthetic aspects as well as some analytic aspects, like their sister language Persian. The idea of the appearance of some periphrastic aspects and serial verb constructions to show the progressive aspect in some dialects of Luri can be considered as the impact of language contact, in which these dialects are getting influenced by Persian, the standard language of the country. Aspectual system in all of these three dialects is based on the ternary division between Perfective, Imperfective and Perfect aspect, like other Indo-European languages (see Hewson & Bubenik, 1997) It should be mentioned that we distinguish grammatical and lexical aspect and we are just looking at the system in grammatical aspect of Luri in this research

A Cognitive Analysis of Conceptual Metaphors and Image Schemas in Azeri Turkish Proverbs

Proverbs represent the beliefs and values of human cultures, the study of which can provide profound insights into concepts and daily experiences of language users. In this regard, cognitive semantics constitutes an effective framework to study linguistic meaning and uncover speakers' conceptualization of the world. In this study, we analyzed Azeri Turkish proverbs based on conceptual metaphor and image schemas theories. First, 470 Azeri proverbs were collected from the Turkish Azeri Proverbs book, and then they were checked by interviewing senior Azeri speakers. The proverbs were initially analyzed by looking for conceptual metaphors and source domain concepts and then the second time they were searched for image schemas. The findings showed that the source domain ANIMAL is the most frequent conceptual domain and the least frequent domain is related to the PATH and HEAT-COLD source domains. Also, the most frequent domain in image schemas was CONTAINMENT image schema and the least frequent one was the BALANCE image schema. In conclusion, findings suggest that the ANIMAL source domain as well as the CONTAINMENT image schema are the most prominent conceptual domains that have been frequently used in Azeri proverbs and have shaped the daily experience of Azeri speakers

The Category of Verb from Prototypical Point of View on the Basis of Givon’s Semantic Criteria: Each Verb as a Category

Prototype theory inspired by cognitive framework has offered a new definition of categories and their members. According to the prototype theory “prototypes” are the best examples of each category and are more central than the other members, while less prototypical and peripheral members show less features of the category. Givon, a functional linguist, has used prototype theory to define linguistic categories. 77 verbs have been classified into prototype, less prototype and peripheral verbs based on Givon’s semantic criteria. The verbs have been driven from “Persian core vocabulary based on Iranian children” and examples offered by Givon (2001: 52). Moreover, the authors of the present study have attempted to draw spatial images of verbs by means of giving numerical values to each criterion. This method gives a holistic picture of each verb based on semantic criteria. Thus, different prototypical verbs can be compared with each other in a more concrete way. Finally, various spatial drawings of verb “give” as a prototype verb in different contexts have been presented. The comparisons of spatial drawings of “give” showed that a verb cannot be called absolutely prototype, because the status of a verb in each criteria is determined by its participants. The consequence is that each verb is a category by itself with infinite members. The members are the contexts in which a verb appears and “participants” are the ones which in each criterion close a verb to prototype or not

Critique of Translation of Marked Information Structures of Sharzad as Tophigh al-Hakim's Play

With regads to the achievements of role-oriented linguistics science, understsnding message and information as the speaker communicate with his/her audience is impossible only to have linguistic knowledge and acquaintance with the meaning of the vocabulary and phrases as well as acquaintance with the apparent statement of sentence, but various linguistic forms according to their communicative role in different situation form different structures which is known as information structure. Among these information structures are focalization. Shahrdzad and Tofigholhakim's play is considered in Arabic literature as a literary work includes marked information structure that its exact translation is so important to translate the meaning desired by the author, so the research needs to find out whether the marked information structures from target language marked in the same way and based on situational texture has been translated into persian language or not. For this purpose marked information structures for Shahzad's play in Arabic language are against the Persian translation of two translators Ayati and Shariat. With regards to purposeful translation in order to transfer meaning desired by the author to a reader in target language; descriptive - analytic method was used. The results indicate that the tanslators of play through translation have used unmarked sentences. Few sentences have been translated into marked form. Though despite the differences in marked structures in both languages a translator by recognizing linguistic forms in focalized information structure and left dislocation can find relatively strong equation for the structures

The Structure and Function of Questioning in Interrogation Discourse (The Case Study of Doroud City)

He current research is an attempt to analyze the different structural, semantic and pragmatic dimensions of "questioning" in trial discourse. The basic questions that can be raised in this regard are: what question forms does the interrogator use in the discourse? And what pragmatic criteria make the choice of one question form superior to another? The data of the present research is taken from cross-examination of the witness in the criminal and civil courts and prosecutor's office of Doroud city. We have used a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze the data. In the quantitative dimension, we measured the types of question forms, and in the qualitative dimension, the types of pragmatic strategies were considered, and in this regard, we mainly used the opinions and methodology of Woodbury (1984) and Gibbons (2003). The findings show that the interrogator (including prosecutor, investigator and judge) uses different types of questions such as broad and narrow wh-questions, declaratives, tags, yes/no, yes/no negative and alternatives in their interaction with the audience. Each of the questions can specifically interrogate people and their identity, and for this reason, they are placed in the category of person-targeted strategies or those that challenge the statements and propositions raised, and in this case, they are called idea-targeted questions. The results of the data analysis indicate that a wide range of pragmatic strategies such as reformulation, repetition, contrast, presupposition, distortion of modality, etc. are used in court discourse. Introduction The current research is an attempt to analyze the different structural, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions of "questioning" in trial discourse. The basic questions raised in this regard are: what question forms does the interrogator use in the discourse? And what pragmatic criteria make the choice of one question form superior to another? The data of the present research is taken from cross-examination of the witness in the criminal and civil courts and prosecutor's office of Doroud city. We have applied a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze the data. In the quantitative dimension, we measured the types of question forms, and in the qualitative dimension, the types of pragmatic strategies were considered, and in this regard, we mainly used the opinions and methodology of Woodbury (1984) and Gibbons (2003). Questions are categorized in terms of structure and meaning, and they can be placed in five categories of Wh-questions, yes/no questions, alternatives, tags, and declarative questions (Biber et al., 1999). Wh-questions are also divided into broad and narrow categories (Woodbury, 1984). Gibbons (2003) explores the types of pragmatic strategies that each participant in judicial discourse uses during questioning and answering. The desired strategies are placed in a general division into two categories, person-targeted and idea-targeted. The first strategy refers to methods that question the character and identity of people, and the second category targets their opinions and statements. Materials and MethodsThe present article is part of a research that studies "the role of questions in judicial discourse" in three contexts of criminal, family, and civil courts of Dorud city. The overall corpus contains about 100 thousand words collected in the period from 10/12/1401 to 03/20/1402 from different courts. Then we tagged the data according to research objective -question forms- using Python software (3.10.11). In order to maintain the balance of the corpus, we tried to extract equal number of words from each context as possible. 4963 words are related to the criminal context and 5160 words are related to the legal context. In order to examine the data, we have mainly used quantitative and qualitative approaches. In the quantitative dimension, we have analyzed the types of question types and in the qualitative dimension, we have explained and described the types of verbal strategies in judicial discourse. In order to protect people's privacy, all information such as first and last name, names of specific places and any information that determines the identity of people in some way has been removed. Discussion and ConclusionThe findings show that the interrogator (including prosecutor, investigator and judge) uses different types of questions such as broad and narrow wh-questions, declaratives, tags, yes/no, yes/no negative and alternatives in their interaction with the lay participants. Figure 1 shows the distribution diagram of the types of question forms in the corpus: Figure 1. Distribution of question forms in witness interrogation in criminal and civil courtsEach of the mentioned types also has its own pragmatics effect and that is the degree of control and limitation of the desired answer. As a result, from this point of view, it can be assumed that there is a continuum of the degree of control of different types of questions, which may change depending on the context. In addition to the structural aspects and components related to the type of question, each participant in the interrogation discourse uses strategies to achieve their goals. Regarding the discourse of the interrogation and specifically the interrogation of the witness, the findings indicate that the interrogator can implement the type of questions depending on the goal he is pursuing in the form of strategies that can either express doubts about the personal competence of the witness or directly contradict his statements. In addition to interrogating the witness, as an active participant in the discourse, he can use strategies according to the situation he is in and the answer he wants. We introduced the types of pragmatic strategies used in the present corpus as follows: reformulation, repetition, contrast, presupposition, distortion of modality, etc. It is worth noting that although the interrogator as a participant with "power" has the most important tool of exercising dominance - question - in the discourse, but other participants can also achieve their goals in a limited way by using linguistics devices (such as lexicon choice and counter questioning) that have their own pragmatic effect. It should be noted that the types of strategies in the court discourse are not limited to those mentioned in the present study and it is obvious that more diverse and significant results can be obtained in other contexts and with the presence of other participants. In addition, some discourse markers that are specific to judicial and interrogation discourse have been left out due to lack of space, but they play a central role in the formation of said discourse (such as turn taking, interruption, interference, etc.) and therefore other researches should be conducted to can cover different dimensions of judicial discourse

The effects of fake reviews during stepwise topic movement on shopping attitude in social network marketing

Although the influence of consumer reviews is increasing in weight, far-flung consumer comments on social networks are a retrogressive problem, disturbing users' attention in reviews studies by interpreting them as misleading messages. The need for investigating the unknown meaning layers of fake reviews in the stepwise topic movement of conversations and examining the effects of the fake reviews on consumers’ shopping attitudes encouraged us to adopt an integrated approach to marketing and discourse analyses. • Qualitative analysis: To qualitatively investigate the stepwise topic movement of fake reviews in each sampled conversation of the research, three phases were taken into consideration: firstly, identification of topic opening; then, topic closing procedure; and finally, the topic switch toward topic drift. • Quantitative investigation: we develop a questionnaire using multidisciplinary research variables. Then, the reliability and validity of the questionnaire were assessed using Cronbach's alpha and convergent and discriminant values, respectively. After that, the questionnaire was evaluated among a research sample. The data was analysed based on structural equation modeling (SEM) and machine learning (ML). • Conclusion: It was found that fake reviews using topic coherence and grammatical-lexical cohesion mechanisms had positive effects on shopping attitudes. Moreover, fake reviews using topic drift mechanisms influenced consumers’ shopping attitudes