Back to Search
Start Over
(De)constructing distinction: Class inequality and elite authenticity in mediatized food discourse.
- Source :
- Journal of Sociolinguistics; Jun2018, Vol. 22 Issue 3, p265-287, 23p, 1 Chart
- Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- Orienting to recent work on language materiality (Cavanaugh and Shankar ) and elite discourse (Thurlow and Jaworski 2017a), I examine the discursive production of class status and the management of distinction/privilege in mediatized food discourse. Specifically, this paper presents a critical discourse analysis of a New York Times food section corpus comprised of 259 articles (e.g. restaurant reviews, celebrity chef profiles, features concerning cooking techniques or trending ingredients, etc.) in which I identify an over‐arching discourse of elite authenticity. I show how elite authenticity is a key strategy by which distinction is nowadays both (re)produced and (dis)avowed in food discourse, and that it is accomplished via five rhetorical strategies: historicity, simplicity, pioneer spirit, lowbrow appreciation, and locality/sustainability. Thus, food discourse, rooted in familiar bourgeois anxieties and privileges, sustains the post‐class ideologies (Thurlow ) and omnivorous consumption (Khan ) at the heart of contemporary class formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 13606441
- Volume :
- 22
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Journal of Sociolinguistics
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 130937233
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12285