Folklore

Adopting a highly innovative position, Luiz Antonio Barreto, in *Folklore, Invention, and Communication* (2005), goes beyond lists of culinary folkloric facts to outline a communicational function of food, recovering the perceptive value of smell and the receptive sense of taste.

In short, he defends the view that cuisine, in itself, constitutes a process of communication. The author from Sergipe calls it the “Brazilian way of communicating,” arguing as follows: “There is an infinity of ways of cultural communication, but it is worth emphasizing that there is nothing, within the cultural horizon, that does not carry the connotation of the value that the user, creator, or interpreter adds”; that is, “the meanings and the ways in which meanings adjust social experience,” since “culture has smell, has taste, has everything that belongs to the life of being in the world. Food that gives off an aroma communicates a tradition, stimulates taste, and guarantees flavor” (p. 78).