Is Cereal Soup?

Here it is. The image

that has shaken the ages for
etymologists and linguists
everywhere. The perplexing,
mind boggling issue that will
likely shape the field as it now
stands in one perfectly
encapsulated, visualized
context.
Okay, well, maybe I
shouldnt go that far, but the
point still remains. This picture
can and does frequently engage
linguists and etymologists
everywhere.
Why, you might be
asking? Well. What is it a
picture of?
A bowl of cereal right?
But what is a bowl of cereal as most people generally understand it? A bowl of dry cereal-based
ingredients, combined with a liquid, usually milk, contained in a bowl, and eaten with a spoon.
That sounds oddly and suspiciously like the same exact practices one might employ
when also attempting to eat soup. Dry ingredients, combined with a liquid, usually hot or broth
based, contained in a bowl, and eaten with a spoon.
So why do we have a word for cereal and a word for soup when both of them can fairly
accurately describe the same exact practices? Well, perhaps, because one is generally served hot
and another cold. Then, could the cereal, in this case, also reasonably be asserted to be a salad?
Perhaps the cereal is the lettuce, the milk, dressing. Yes, salad isnt generally eaten with a spoon,
but it wouldnt be too far of a stretch.
So why is cereal not generally accepted to be a soup in society? Is cereal soup or salad?
Do we have a word for that? And, even if we did, would we be able to put our fingers on it as
language speakers? In other words, does our differentiation of cereal and soup have anything to
do with our ability to specifically recall certain words for specific meanings?
In pyscholinguistics (bear with me here, its a real field [neuropsychology, cognitive
psychology and linguistics!]) there is a plethora of disorders that categorize the phenomenon of
forgetting the word we mean to say, so it would be reasonable to suggest that we may have no
word for this cereal-soup thing we are describing above. It could just be that we, as a collective
human mind, have forgotten that the two words are actually nuances of the same thing and that
one blanket term can summarily identify the bowl of cereal depicted here.
One disorder is called dysnomia: the chronic, frequent inability or difficulty retrieving
vocabulary items. Or, perhaps, aphasia: the loss of ability to understand or produce speech at
intermittent intervals1. In psychology, theres even more of an overabundance of terminology for
this. Lethologica, aka Tip-of-the-tongue, aka TOT (for short,) aka presque vu (coming from the
French almost seen.) Meaning? The failure to retrieve a word from memory, on the condition
that partial recall is evident and the feeling of retrieval intimates imminence. 2 Nearly a centurys
worth of what was likely neck-breaking psycholinguistic study to sum up what is and always has
been a daily, not unusual occurrence in my life. A fundamental inability to identify the object,
item, or idea using words anybody can understand. To compensate for this, we use phrases to
describe the familiar or mime the outline or pertinent actions of the given item in silent
frustration.
The study of rhetoric demands that rhetoricians be careful in their implementation of
language when attempting to communicate a specific message like this, and as such are held to a
far different standard than that which is applied to most
Image created by wordcloud.net; designed by me
other people. More than is the case with others,
rhetoricians hold
themselves and are held
to a higher standard in
their judgment and
command of the
correct selection of
words.
So, it only makes
sense to consider
whether cereal is a soup
or a salad in the proper
context of rhetoric to
ascertain whether or not
an answer can ever truly
be reached. Therefore,
my challenge is this: as
a rhetorician, I will
attempt to narrow down
whether it is possible to

1
Manasco, M. Motor Speech Disorders, The Dysarthrias. In Introduction to neurogenic communication
disorders (2014), Burlington, MA: Jones & Barlett Learning.
2
Brown, AS. "A review of the tip-of-the-tongue experience", Psychological Bulletin (Mar 1991), 109 (2):
20423.
choose or create a single, universally accepted word in English to identify the bowl of soup
depicted above in the spirit of the philosophy of rhetoric.
This wont be easy. After all, human language is flexible and extensible. There are 5,000
languages in use today, so attempting to find any one word to approximate, measure, or identify
reality for every single English-speaking person might take some time, if it was even possible.3
Even then, the most masterful of rhetoricians would have trouble identifying something that
could be understood across language barriers for the whole human family to understand. Thats
the glory and, bizarrely, the limitation of languages.
So, how do we do determine whats what and whos who when so many of our words are
limited in their ability to describe reality?
Contrast, of course!
For example, rhetoricians might be good at identifying which words to use, perhaps, but
they might not be good good. He might like or like me like me. I might be awake but Im not
awake awake.

Theres no Reduplication in English.

At least, not in English English.
That is a phenomenon known in linguistics as Contrastive Focus Reduplication, or lexical
cloning, which occurs in colloquial English to indicate that the prototypical meaning of the
subject word is being repeated to establish differentiation of the subject from the norm. It
draws the focus to the contrast being proven by the reduplication of the word.
For example, one could say book or book book [general term for any book vs. a paper
book.] By repeating the word a second time, this time with emphasis on the primary indicator,
the focus is being drawn not on the fact that the subject is a book but instead that the speaker or
writer means to draw attention to the differences between the standard considerations of what a
book is and what the speaker or writer means this time.4 In this case, Contrastive Focus
Reduplication allows subjects of sentences to become adjectives, descriptors, of themselves.
This could help us answer our ultimate question: is cereal soup? Sure. But it just might
not be soup soup. And salad? Why not? Its just not salad salad.
With the advent of a rapidly evolving technologically focused future, Reduplication
occurs more and more often to establish that the intended subject being referenced isnt the
prototypical-type, but rather a fringe-type. And theres no way to do this in our language right
now without either knowing the type of subject you mean, which is likely not often, given the
rapidly changing nature of things in our current age, or just repeating the subjective word for
emphasis.

3
Swoyer, Chris, et al. Relativism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014).
4
Ghomeshi, Jila, et al. "Contrastive focus reduplication in English (The salad-salad paper)." Natural
Language & Linguistic Theory 22.2 (2004): 307-357.
 For example, if you want to talk about a book nowadays, theres some thought involved.
You could say e-book, the fringe prototype that is specific in its context, or book book, the
prototypical, handheld, paper book we all once universally recognized as the sole means to
produce literature. Another pop culture example, film. When film first came out, it was just
called film. With the advent of newer technology, the single term film became too broad for all
the fringe types of films, and as such terms like silent film, super-8 film, color film, motion
picture film, all came out to emphasize what was just once known as a film film.
In fact, identifying a book as a paper book or a film as a silent film is what is called in the
field of linguistics as Retronymics, which occurs when terms, like book or film, are renamed or
rephrased to mean an entirely new,
specific term, as opposed to the older
original meaning of the term that stands
Dirt Road White
alone.5 The same could be said for an
analog clock. The word analog, in this
Milk Live Music
instance, makes the two terms paired
together a Retronym, whereas clock or
Paper Book Manual
clock clock can stand on their own.
Analog is a modification of the original
Transmission
word made necessary by new, popularized
beliefs of the standard of a given
Natural Language
subject. Before the digital clock, analog
clocks, as we now know them, were just
Broadcast Television
clocks. And before there was just snail
mail, which we just called mail. Now, we
Ancient Greece
have email and voicemail and snail mail,
for that matter.
Cloth Diaper Plain
Another example of this can be
found when discussing guitars: acoustic
Text Hand Truck
and electric are both forms of guitars.
They both are guitars in nature, but their
Motor Cars
Retronymic adjectival properties allow them to be identified more specifically so as to avoid
using the Contrastive Focus Reduplication discussed earlier. Before the invention of new types
of guitars, the acoustic guitar was just simply the guitar.
Lost you yet?
Perhaps.
So, lets go back. Knowing what we know now, is cereal a soup?
Well, like we said, cereal might be a soup, just not a soup soup. Or maybe, its possible to
retronymically modify the word to make it fit our needs given our newfound understanding of

5
"Retronym." Def. 1. Dictionary.com. N.p., n.d. Web.
how we can modify words. So, making cereal a retronym for soup, perhaps we could call it
cereal-soup: a soup that has the same properties as soup but also those of cereals.
Even I concede, though, in the spirit of rhetoric, with the ambiguity that frequents this field, that
rhetoricians frequently choose the most verbose means possible to explain the simplest of answers to the
broadest of questions. (Like: is cereal soup?) However, considering the complicated nuances that come with
Reduplicative Contrast Focus, it stands to reason that English should be evaluated holistically from a
rhetoricians standpoint to ascertain the larger message found here: how and why words are words used the
way we use them, and why does that make the usage of these words correct? What determines correctness
in language? Who decides what is correct?
It is no secret that the English language is full of things that, to a non-English speaker, wouldnt or
shouldnt be considered correct because it is inconsistent with its own rules. Consider the sentence: The
fields at the farm produce produce. No, thats not Contrastive Focus Reduplication, thats a different word
entirely. Proh-doos, vegetable, fruit, or other natural byproducts of the farm, versus pruh-dooc, the act of
creating something. Or how about, The dove dove into the bushes for protection. Duhv, a white bird
associated with peace, versus dohv, the act of diving in the past tense.
More things to consider: if I am a writer, which means I write, why do my fingers not fing? They
both end in er, right? If teachers taught someone, why does a preacher not praught someone too? In a city,
one can almost certainly find a building being constructed. However, the buildings around it are completed.
Why, then, arent the completed buildings simply call Builts?
English is funny that way. And the English language is limited to what and how I am able to
express my ideas to the people who are familiar with it. Again, it goes back to what is correct and who
thinks that it is so. Who I am talking to about cereal-soup and how I am saying it. This is where rhetoric
comes in.
In an article written by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, entitled The New Rhetoric, a
universal audience is considered in rhetoric, and how that universal audience is impossible to reach
without first polarizing someone who will inevitably exist outside of the specialized group of people. The
article reads, Argumentation aimed exclusively at a particular audience has the drawback that the speaker,
by the very fact of adapting to the views of his listeners, might rely on arguments that are foreign or even
directly opposed to what is acceptable to persons other than those he is presently addressing.6
So, if we consider the question: is cereal soup? and try to form a word that all people can
understand for a bowl of cereal, it would seem that, with this reality in mind, the answer would be no
due simply to the fact that a single, unanimously accepted anything is inherently polarizing to someone,
somewhere. In other words, one group might accept an invented word for cereal-soup, but another, due to
nuances in space, time, and culture, could not based on some other factor. As a result, I have only pleased a
few of the people in the English language. Those few would consider my invented word to be correct, but
those who existed outside of my target demographic would continue to view cereal as cereal, and not as
cereal-soup. Therefore, with this thought in mind, naming cereal as anything but cereal would be

6
Perelman, Chaim, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. Excerpt from The New Rhetoric. Trans. John Wilkinson
and Purcell Weaver. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame, 1969. 13 -35. Print.
intrinsically incorrect to most people. As such, the answer to my challenge as to whether I could invent a
new word for this would have to be no.
However, there is more to consider than simply accepting the knowledge of only one
articles rhetoricians. There are others to consider. For example, Kenneth Burke, in his article
Language as Action: Terministic Screens, challenges the assumptions many people have about
language to determine the nature of language. He categorizes scientistic language as that which
is used to define, whereas dramatistic is that which is used to act. Burke writes, Even if any
given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a
selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality.7
In other words, Burke is stating that, perhaps, a book book is a paper-bound piece of
literature, not because that is how it inherently exists in reality as English speakers understand it,
but because that is how we, as English speakers, have decided that this is our understanding of
book. (Or, more specifically, that book book is the correct term.) Therefore, book book is not
a reflection of reality, but instead a selection of two words put together that English speakers
have made to create an agreed-upon meaning. Essentially, Burkes writings are consistent with
the assertion that language shapes reality.
So, whats all this mean?
Is cereal soup?
Not sure yet.
Can I create a word in English to identify cereal-soup?
The jury is out. If we take Burkes evaluation of language into consideration, I could, in
fact, choose or invent a new term for cereal-soup because his assertions state that terminology is
only that way because English speakers have decided it to be so. So, to Burke, words shape
thought, and anything is possible when inventing new terms for new understandings.
However, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca have a drastically different view, stating that
the audience, or a target demographic of all English speakers, is impossible to address as a
whole due to its sheer mass, scope, and culture. Those who consider themselves to be outsiders,
the fringe to the prototype of the English speakers I am intending to address, would fail to
recognize or acknowledge my message.
However, do not despair yet. Cereal might still be soup. Let me bridge this one gap here: I speak
English, and have always spoken English. I am from New England, and I know several foreign languages.
With this information in mind, I have, according to spatial rhetorics, established that I am part of this key
demographic. I occupy this space in this time, and my views of a place are likely very similar to those also
found within my demographic.
This is something written about in rhetorician Nedra Reynolds chapter Reading
Landscapes and Walking the Streets. In the chapter, she details how space is hugely influenced
by cultural geography and that spaces are agreed upon by cultural identity. Reynolds writes,
Cultural geographers study the ways in which cultures are contested spatially and how identity
and power are reproduced in the everyday, in mundane, ordinary landscapes. How do particular
sites acquire meanings, and how do different subcultures use places and sites?8

7
Burke, Kenneth. Rhetorical Analysis: The Rhetoric of Hitlers Battle (1939). On Symbols and Society,
Joseph R. Gusfield, ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989. 211-231. (Originally published in Southern Review, 1939).
8
Reynolds, Nedra. Reading Landscapes and Walking the Streets: Geography and the Visual.
Geographies of Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. 47-77.
 This means that the value of a place, at least according to Dr. Reynolds evaluation as
pertaining to those of cultural geographers, is largely decided based on the evolutionary culture
of a people in a given space. As such, the chances of me being able to address the whole English-
speaking family would be a fruitless task. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca are correct in this. My
audience was too large and too far out of my own depth.
However, if I narrow down my culture to those in New England, perhaps even further to
University of Rhode Island WRT students, I have a far more approachable audience. Then, I can
apply Burkes assertions to the ability of language speakers to shape reality.
So, lets bridge all these gaps!
As an English speaker, I have adapted to a system of communication that has developed and
evolved for millennia, that has a preset of shared assumptions and ideas about standards of things, but the
words I mean may not always be the words that I say, as we have established. My words arent unique to
me, but rather, to my demographic. To my New-Englanders, to my family, and to other groups to which I
belong. My standard of the correct language can only be applied to me and to those like me.
So, I might mean soup, not cereal-soup or salad-soup. Just soup soup. I might also coin a new term,
cereal-soup, and retronymically modify the term soup to fit my needs. But, because of the nature of our
language, and how language is largely determined by culture, space, time, and perspective, we dont have a
word to mean what it is that we, as speakers or writers, want to say.
Because of this, the question as to whether or not I can coin a new term for cereal-soup would have
to be a resounding maybe. It could always catch on in my culture, in my demographic, with my people. And
then, my people interact with groups of other people, and their people speak the word to others, and so on
until the new term Ive created is being used widely throughout the English language.
However, this is largely contingent on the fact that my people use the term. It is also
contingent on the fact that they appreciate the terms significance and enjoy using it. My term
also has to make more sense than the original term. If this stuck, then my word could eventually
maybe be accepted into the English language. This is what is known in English as
rebracketing.
In historical linguistics, Rebracketing is a term that can be applied when a word from an
original source is broken down, or bracketed, into a different set of factors to create a new
meaning.9
Lets whip out yet another example. In theme with our breakfast foods set, let us consider
the word omelette. Coming from 17th century French la lemelle, which was the popularized
version of the proper term: lalemelle, both meaning omelette as we currently understand it. If
we look even further back, we can see that the omelette actually comes from the Late Latin
lamella, meaning blade, perhaps because of the shape of the dish or the implements used
while preparing it.10 But heres a simpler example: the humble apron. Apron, coming from the
Middle English napron, meaning lap mat, similar to the understanding of place mat during
that time. We have simply, over time, morphed the word a naperon to eventually end up as an
apron.

9
John McWhorter. The Power of Babel: A natural history of language. (2003). Harper Perennial.
10
Hendrickson, Robert. QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins. New York: Facts on File, Inc.,
1998.
 Why does this matter?
Because a shared understanding of language is flexible. It is determined by what people
want and how people think. However, as a rhetorician, it is important to conclusively say that,
perhaps, while I may not be able to verbalize the exact methodology or term I need for the idea I
am trying to express, like cereal-soup or salad-soup, I may take comfort in the fact that, with
increased use and popularization, I may invent a term for the idea I am expressing as a means to
create thought.
So, is cereal-soup?
I say, at least to my most personal, close-to-home demographic audience, most definitely.