The 2025 Georgetown University Round Table

Georgetown University Round Table (GURT)

The Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) is an annual academic conference that has been held since 1949 at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. GURT is one of the most prestigious and long-standing conferences in the field of linguistics.

GURT’s primary aim is to provide a platform for scholars, researchers, and linguists from around the world to come together and discuss a wide range of topics related to language and linguistics. Each year’s conference has a specific theme within the field, with presentations, panel discussions, and roundtables organized around that theme.

Over the years, GURT has covered a broad spectrum of topics, including but not limited to discourse analysis, language acquisition, language variation, assessment, phonetics and syntax. By covering these themes, GURT has played a significant role in advancing research and promoting collaboration among language scholars.

Round Table with a group of selected scholars, students, and practitioners.
Networking Opportunities: Connect with researchers in the field of language and food.
Publication Opportunities: Select papers will be considered for publication in the GURT Series published by Georgetown University Press.

GURT 2025: Language and Food

Food and language are omnipresent and intertwined in everyday life. We use language to talk about food, and food terms have rich cultural histories and associations. Menus and food packaging labels not only provide windows on an item’s nature and quality, but also often signal association with identities such as ethnicity, region, or class. Mealtime has long been a privileged site for the study of language in use, as people talk while they eat, and while they cook. Parents use language to socialize their children into food preferences and practices; even among adults, the taste of food is collaboratively negotiated in interaction: think wine tasting, or dinner conversation. Children in school cafeterias and co-workers in workplace break rooms talk about food. People participate in online forums on topics such as gourmet cooking, veganism, and weight loss; they use language about food to portray themselves as certain kinds of people (gourmand, disciplined eater, environmentalist, picky eater, athlete). People post photos of food on Instagram, recipe videos on TikTok and Facebook, and restaurant reviews on Yelp. Food is a necessity and a luxury; it is intertwined with identities (e.g., cultural, gendered, socioeconomic, political, religious), relationships (e.g., parent-child, friend-friend, host-guest), and values (e.g., healthful eating, ethical eating), all of which are negotiated through language.

GURT 2025 will bring together diverse scholars whose work explores intersections between language and food. The conference will be inclusive of multiple approaches, including (but not limited to) interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, ethnography of communication, cultural discourse analysis, narrative analysis, variation analysis, semiotics, systemic functional linguistics, historical linguistics, comparative linguistics, computational/corpus linguistics, and cognitive linguistics. We invite submissions that consider any aspect of food and language, including (but not limited to) menus, recipes, mealtime conversations, food-related online discussions, social media posts about food, food-related podcasts, food advertisements, and documentary and reality TV shows about food.

The GURT 2025 will take place on the 1st — 3rd floors of the Edward C. Bunn Intercultural Center, commonly referred to as ICC. Please check the complete program for specific locations.