“…Thus, readers of the NYT tend to earn more, and are better educated. However, as Thurlow and Jaworski () note, ‘ “elite” is something people do, not something they necessarily have or are’ (244). In this sense, the NYT must also assert its elite status by constantly stylizing its readers as elite; consider how the paper frames itself and its audience below, in an excerpt from their ‘media kit’ for advertisers:The New York Times reaches a deeply engaged and highly influential reader.…”
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.
“…Thus, readers of the NYT tend to earn more, and are better educated. However, as Thurlow and Jaworski () note, ‘ “elite” is something people do, not something they necessarily have or are’ (244). In this sense, the NYT must also assert its elite status by constantly stylizing its readers as elite; consider how the paper frames itself and its audience below, in an excerpt from their ‘media kit’ for advertisers:The New York Times reaches a deeply engaged and highly influential reader.…”
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.
“…Conceptualizing eliteness presents a challenge because “elites are notoriously difficult to determine and the boundaries of elite status—as a label and as a material phenomenon—are seldom straightforward” (Thurlow & Jaworski, : 243). The conceptual complexity of eliteness is further augmented by its essential but unsettled relationship with the other, more contested, concept of social class.…”
Section: Conceptualizing Eliteness and Its Discursive Constructionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…More importantly, in talking about the elite–social class relationship, we need to emphasize their relationality , rather than autonomy. That is, the elite exist in relation to other social groups (Thurlow & Jaworski, ). In our data, this relationality is illustrated by the othering of the BM educated by the EM educated for their in‐group identity and legitimacy.…”
Section: Conceptualizing Eliteness and Its Discursive Constructionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As previously noted, understanding the discursive construction of elite identity (cultural) of the EM educated needs to be linked to their social privilege (material). This dual focus is accommodated by Thurlow and Jaworski's (: 244) conception of eliteness, which refers to “the semiotic and communicative resources by which people differentiate themselves and by which they access symbolic‐material resources for shoring up status, privilege and power.” Such a conception guides us to consider both the discursive and the material, through our analysis of how material privilege is rationalized, and therefore reproduced, through discursive means.…”
Section: Conceptualizing Eliteness and Its Discursive Constructionmentioning
Debates over medium of instruction, as ideological skirmishes, showcase discursive identity construction, reproduction, and contestation by different social groups. Drawing on such debates in letters to the editor and internet‐based newsgroup posts written by Bangladeshi English‐medium (EM) and Bangla‐medium (BM) educated writers, this article examines the construction of elite identity by the EM educated group. It illustrates how this group drew on changing discourses of elitism, language ideologies, and other identity resources to construct self‐identity that emphasized the achievement of qualifications and attributes rather than unearned social privilege, and how the territorially bound elite identity was transformed into deterritorialized cosmopolitan identity in the process. The article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between language, identity, and society by illustrating struggles for identity and status maintenance in education that is increasingly being dominated by English and English as a medium of instruction under the influence of neoliberal globalization. It also suggests how English and national languages may relate to (post)colonialism, nationalism, national identity, and social class in a globalized world.
“…Political cartoon discourse is an invaluable instrument of 'critique', strategically using humour as transgression in order to challenge political power and to provide contest for symbolic power. Cartoons provide a site for struggle in the contest for the terrain of symbolic power in that they may be used to legitimise, or resist, attitudes and beliefs which may be prevalent at a particular moment in society and in public discourse (Bourdieu, 1991;Van Dijk, 1998;Marín-Arrese, 2005;Gibbs, 2015;Thurlow & Jaworski, 2017). Political cartoons combine caricature, satire and humour to convey socio-political commentary, the critical butt aimed at powerholders, which calls into question the legitimacy of certain social norms and specific policies or practices (Marín-Arrese, 2005.…”
Section: Creativity Critique and Persuasionmentioning
This paper aims to explore the potential of political cartoon discourse for creativity, critique and persuasion, in the representation of social actors and events and in the evaluation of the consequences of Brexit. The paper focuses on the use and interaction of metaphors, metonymies, blending strategies, and cultural models in cartoons depicting the Brexit conundrum, from the perspective of Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) (Charteris-Black, 2011; Musolff, 2012) and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDS) (Machin, 2013). The case study adopts an integrated multifaceted framework in the analysis of a representative sample of cartoons selected from quality newspapers published in the UK. The aim is to reveal the synergistic interplay in: (a) the use of metaphors, metonymies, blending strategies, and cultural models in the depiction of social actors, phenomena and events; (b) the features of creativity in the expression of political commentary by professional cartoonists (novelty, recontextualization); and (c) the role of political cartoons in the critique and challenge of political power, by creating counter-narratives and acting as vehicles of persuasion.
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