Liver and Foie: Conceptual Differences across the English Channel

The availability of the "liver" concept is analyzed across the lang & culture of GB & France through results of a participant observation carried out in both countries over several years. In French society, gastronomically sophisticated & suffering from chronic psychosomatic indigestion, foie is a mundane word covering all sorts of affected abdominal organs & rating high on the scale of daily lexical availability; the English society, traditionally relaxed about matters of health & cuisine, utilizes liver in pathological & culinary contexts - thus giving the word a low intensity in daily interaction. This discrepancy exemplifies the shortcomings of dictionary definitions, which equate such words & give very little idea of their distribution in common usage. AA