Gastronomy Scholars’ Perspectives towards the Gastronomy Term: A Metaphorical Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine gastronomy scholars’ perspectives onto gastronomy term. By adopting qualitative research method, content analysis was utilized. The data were drawn from interviews with 29 scholars from tourism faculties in seven Turkish universities. After content analysis, the metaphors were put forward by the interviewees categorized into different groups such as tangible attributes, intangible attributes, living beings, food and nature, places and miscellaneous comparisons. Gastronomy and tourism scholars have yet to study the potentially useful applications of metaphors empirically. This study thus intends to fill a gap in the existing literature.