Queering critical discourse studies or/and Performing ‘post-class’ ideologies

(De)constructing distinction: Class inequality and elite authenticity in mediatized food discourse

“…In this way, I understand eliteness as not just a political, social, and economic category, but also as a discursive and rhetorical accomplishment, which woos us into perpetuating cycles of inequality. Key to this wooing is Thurlow's () notion of ‘post‐class ideologies.’ Similar to the workings of post‐race or post‐feminist ideologies, we are often persuaded that structural barriers have been, or can be, easily erased, and/or that social class no longer matters. Arguably, a quintessential example of post‐class ideology at work is Donald Trump's notoriously successful claims to being a ‘self‐made’ man, despite the $1 million loan he received from his father to start his business .…”

“…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.…”

Introducing elite discourse: the rhetorics of status, privilege, and power

“…Outside of feminist and queer traditions, academics are very quick to analyse (romanticize or glamorize) the poor and to demonize the rich in ways which leave our own bourgeois practices/privileges undercover and under-examined (Thurlow 2016). Ours is often an everyone-but-me politics.…”

“…There is also our own work focusing specifically on elite status and the social semiotics of luxury as a classed discourse (e.g. Thurlow andJaworski 2006, 2012, forthcoming;Jaworski and Thurlow 2009;Thurlow 2016) 3 . This renewed interest in class and social status clearly makes sense given the widespread, deepening economic injustices around us; but it also makes sense because language and communication are so central to the production and circulation of class ideologies, and to the formation and maintenance of material inequality.…”

Discourse analysis as critique

“…11 A classic, mostly discourse-theoretical article in this regard would be Edwards et al (1995). For a wonderful recent piece musing on the necessity of queering critical discourse studies in a playful tone, see Thurlow (2016).…”