Search

As one of the most basic and accessible social codes, food has many social and cultural connotations. This article aims to offer a semiotic reading of ordinary Chinese meals. The three-meal structure and four binary oppositions (Cooked/Raw, Fan/Cai, Solids/Liquids, and Vegetable/Meat) are discussed. The laws that govern the Chinese meal system reveal how Chinese people see themselves and others, how they connect the past and present, and how they identify themselves with their culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comments below are meant to show that considerations of public and private realms and the tension between these realms arise in a natural and persistent way in discussions connected with semiotics. In particular, they arise out of the themes of body and sociocultural mathematical meaning-making, which are recurring themes of the papers in this volume. The public-private dichotomy is related to other dichotomies such as those between outer and inner and collective and individual. For educators, such dichotomies are important in that they reflect the division between students' own inner and individual understandings of mathematical ideas and their functioning within a shared sociocultural world of mathematical meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]