by Zoë Pollock
Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky examined the names of ice cream flavors and cracker brands. Peter Smith summarizes his conclusions:
[Jurafsky] found that the ice cream names tended to employ back vowels—sounds formed in the back of our mouths that generally refer to big, fat, heavy things. Front vowels, on the other hand, tend to be used in words that refer to small, thin, light foods, like crackers. Say them out loud: rocky road, chocolate, cookie dough, coconut—heavy on low-frequency o's. Now listen to Cheese Nips, Cheez-Its, Wheat Thins, Ritz Bits, Triscuit, Cheese Crisps—you can hear all those little bitty e's and i's. … "Retracting the corners of the mouth shrinks the size of the front cavity in the mouth, just like the vowels ɪ [ē] or i," Jurafsky writes. "In fact, the similarity in mouth position between smiling and the vowel i explains why we say 'cheese' when we take pictures; it is the smiling vowel."
The Dish 