you are what you eat

sophie
wodzak

Infographics by Sophie Wodzak. All images via Flickr. Cover photo:Pia Bineau/Portraits: Becka Hussey/Pie: Cara Nicoletti/Donut: Maibrit Olsen

Restaurant reviews
arent about the food.

combine short narratives with a

rich cache of metadata including geographical location, cuisine,
price pointand most importantly,
the ubiquitous five-star rating systemthey offer the perfect conditions in which to use narrative text
as evaluative data. This data can
then be used to study the ways
people are using language to express sentiment.

o says Dan Jurafsky, a professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. He claims

that when you read Shawn Os fivestar review of Legume, for example, you may learning more about
Shawn himself than the Chicken
Paprikash he had for dinner the
other night.

ne thing we already know

about people is that theyre
inclined to be optimisticat
least, on a subconscious level. Its
called the Pollyanna Principle,
named for the fictional little girl
who always tried to see the glad
in things. The idea is that, generally speaking, people will remember
positive experiences more accurately than negative ones.

It was consumers like Shawn, and

not their dining experiences, that
Jurafsky set out to evaluate with his
recently published study, Narrative
Framing of Consumer Sentiment in
Online Restaurant Reviews. Working with a team of linguists and financial analysts at Carnegie Mellon
University, Jurafsky investigated
900,000 online restaurant reviews,
in order to determine how people use language to express finegrained differences in sentiment,
beyond just positive and negative.
When discussing a recent meal,
people provide all sorts of subtle
context clues to communicate their
experience. For example, the use of
singular or plural pronouns can tell
you whether theyre focusing on
their own individual experience, or
one they shared with their fellow
diners. The nouns they choose indicate the subject of their narrative:
hostess, server, sauvignon blanc,
duck leg confit Even the choice
of verb tense can indicate something about a writers perspective:
using the present tense to describe
action in the past suggests a desire
to relive the moment, whereas use
of the past tense may indicate a
desire to create psychological distance.
Armed with this knowledge, you
can evaluate a written narrative
and draw some conclusions about
the authors mindset. Take this excerpt for example, taken from a recent review of Cure:
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Jurafsky found that when it comes

to food, this tendency is even more
pronounced. Faced with a large
set of narratives that were decidedly positive in tone, he set out
to analyze their linguistic makeup,
in order to determine the kinds of
language people were using to express positive sentiment. His analysis divided these positive reviews
into two main camps, separated by
price point. It seems that, when reviewing cheap restaurants, people
overwhelmingly resort to addiction vocabulary: terms like craving,
jonesing, chocoholic. Take this recent review of Las Palmas Taqueria
for example:

I have been lucky enough to dine

at some of the great restaurants of
the US, from French Laundry to
Rich Table to Underbelly, and Cure
takes the cake. Yes, in my opinion,
bite for bite, better than French
Laundry. Of course youre not in
Yountville, just across from a car repair shop in up and coming L-Ville,
but nevertheless, this place is not to
be missed.

Here, the reviewer is making a point

to establish himself as an authority.
He use of the present tense creates a sense of immediacy. Though
the allusions to other high-caliber
restaurants are ostensibly included
as a means of drawing comparison,
the name dropping also conveys
a sense of self-importance on the
part of the author. Clearly, it isnt
just about the food.

Analyzing testimonials in this manner can certainly be informative

on an individual level, but its not a
very efficient way of assessing the
big picturethat is, how pleased
people are or arent with a restaurant overall. If you look at reviews
on consumer-based sites like Ebay,
Amazon, and Yelp, youll notice that
they tend pair consumer testimonials with a rating on a five-point

numerical scale. This system allows

you to group the reviews, in order
to determine their relative frequency. It also allows for selective consumption: you can focus exclusively on the positive, or the negative,
according to your personal interest. The neatness with which these
written reviews are organized is
especially attractive to linguists like
Jurafsky. Because these systems

Im constantly craving them. Its

gotten so bad that I think of the
amount of money I have in terms
of how many tacos I can purchase
at Las Palmas.
The language paints a picture: the
reviewer isnt hungry for a snack,
hes in need of a fix. The food-asdrug metaphor is pervasive among
cheap restaurant reviewsthe text
is riddled with phrases like edible
crack, the new crack, better than
crack.
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Generally speaking, the menu

items thusly described are what Jurafsky would call non-normative.
In other words, people arent craving vegetables. They want chicken
wings, donuts, cheeseburgers, egg
rollsfoods considered inappropriate for meal time. Sugary, fried, or
of otherwise questionable nutritional value. Because the cuisine
tends to be fast-food or take-out,
reviews generally focus on menu
items, rather than the restaurants
themselves.

ositive reviews of expensive

restaurants, on the other
hand, pay a great deal of attention to ambiance, quality, and
service. Which of course makes
perfect sense: when people spend
more money on a meal, they feel
the need to justify their purchase,
emphasizing factors that contributed to their overall experience.
Here, the language is overwhelmingly sexual; in place of the junky
in need of a fix, we find a food lov-

the other
customers

11%

not enough
free drinks

23%

the food

er, a savant especially in tune with

the sensual nature of cuisine. Think
words like lust, seduction, sinful,
and orgasmic. Religious metaphor
is also common, as seen in this recent review of Salt of the Earth:
The taste was superb My date
was licking the bowl. We ordered
cocktails, we couldnt get enough
of them. They were divine The
vegetables were heavenly. I tried
his fish I was in love. We ended
with coffee, which was god like

overwhelming tendency to show

off their linguistic capital. Simply
put, the more expensive the restaurant, the fancier the words people
use to describe it. This customer
isnt just eating a meal, shes indulging in a sensual pleasure.
So we find both diners giving into
temptation in some way. Yet their
narratives differ considerably: the
first guilt-ridden and frantic, the
second sophisticated and romantic. Whether they realize it or not, in

The language paints a picture:

the reviewer isnt hungry for a snack
hes in need of a fix.

Here the reviewer employs descriptors like superb and divine,

not commonly used in daily conversation. This is typical of positive
reviews, in which diners exhibit an

18%
8%someone

looked at me
funny

40%

the service

both cases the reviewer is making a

series of linguistic choices that indicate something about their own
sense of self.
According to Jurafsky, what these
people are telling us is that theyre
overwhelmingly concerned with
face. Praising inexpensive restaurants, theyre consumed by guilt.
By employing drug-related vocabulary, they acknowledge questionable behavior, and at the same time
evade blame. That crack is so often
named drug-of-choice emphasizes
this element of addiction.
Whereas, in the case of more expensive restaurants, reviewers
combine flowery vocabulary and
sensual imagery in an attempt to
demonstrate their level sophistication. They want you to know that
they appreciate fine cuisine, they
understand foodand theyre in a
position to pay for a quality experience.

T
user poll via urlesque

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his isnt the whole story, of

coursethere are plenty of
negative reviews out there
too. But in analyzing one and two
star reviews, Jurafsky found that

price wasnt nearly as relevant to

customers reactions. The entire
set of negative reviews, regardless
of price point, shared in a distinct
set linguistic features: specifically, a
combination of expressed negative
sentiment experienced by first-person plural pronouns towards third
person singular pronouns. Take, for
example, this one-star review of Pinos Contemporary Italian:
Two of us were there early and
rudely treated by the hostess. She
was vague about seating us and we
decided to wait at the bar. When the
rest of our group arrived (on time!!)
I informed the hostess and she
looked at us blankly. She told us it
would be a while
Here, reviews arent focusing on
the menu; instead they tend to describe indignities groups of diners
suffered collectively at the hands
of various third parties. Expressed
negative sentiment means that
reviews arent talking about what
good things people didnt do,
theyre talking about the bad things
they did do. For example, it isnt
that the hostess wasnt clear, its
that she was vague; she didnt fail
to be polite, she was rude.
As it turns out, linguistically speaking, the way people tend to review
bad restaurants is very similar to

Small businesses comlain about negative yelp

reviews, but according to the company, the majority
of its customers give ratings of 4 stars or higher.

13%
8%

39%

13%

27%

Sources: Small Business Association; The Company; The Wall Street Journal

attaining collective closure. Negative reviews, therefore, are not

merely evaluative, they serve as a
coping mechanism.

Simply put, the more expensive the

restaurant, the fancier the words
people use to describe it

the way in which people typically

talk about trauma. In both cases
the writing features predominantly
first-person plural pronouns such
as we and us, as a means of emphasizing the authors membership in a group of sufferers. Both
demonstrate a linguistic expression
of shared grief.recounting their
experience in writing is a means of

hether reviewers portray

themselves as addicts,
connoseiurs, or victims,
their language serves to express
their sense of self. That customers feel obligated to compose
these lengthy reviews is indicative
of a complex business model, in
which the individual contribution

of evaluative data is as relevant as

the money being exchanged. And
so it would seem that restaurant
reviews are in fact multi-purpose:
not only do they offer consumers
and business owners specific feedback about the local dining scene,
they provide a glimpse into the
subconscious psychological forces
that influence how we express ourselves to the world.
Jurafsky and his team consider the
arena of restaurant reviews a burgeoning arena of social discourse
in which individual feedback constitutes a vehicle for consumers to
present themselves in a positive
light. So the next time you sit down
to write a review, take a moment
and think it over--what are you really trying to say?

research accommodation

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