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Making privilege palatable: Normative sustainability in chefs’ Instagram discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2020

Gwynne Mapes Open the ORCID record for Gwynne Mapes [Opens in a new window]  and
Andrew S. Ross
Gwynne Mapes*
Affiliation:
University of Bern, Switzerland
Andrew S. Ross
Affiliation:
University of Sydney, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: Gwynne Mapes University of Bern, Department of English Länggassstrasse 49 3012Bern, Switzerlandgwynne.mapes@ens.unibe.ch
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Abstract

In this article we consider the discursive production of status as it relates to democratic ideals of environmental equity and community responsibility, orienting specifically to food discourse and ‘elite authenticity’ (Mapes 2018), as well as to recent work concerning normativity and class inequality (e.g. Thurlow 2016; Hall, Levon, & Milani 2019). Utilizing a dataset comprised of 150 Instagram posts, drawn from three different acclaimed chefs’ personal accounts, we examine the ways in which these celebrities emphasize local/sustainable food practices while simultaneously asserting their claims to privileged eating. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, we document three general discursive tactics: (i) plant-based emphasis, (ii) local/community terroir, and (iii) realities of meat consumption. Ultimately, we establish how the chefs’ claims to egalitarian/environmental ideals paradoxically diminish their eliteness, while simultaneously elevating their social prestige, pointing to the often complicated and covert ways in which class inequality permeates the social landscape of contemporary eating. (Food discourse, elite authenticity, normativity, social class, locality/sustainability)*

Type
Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 259 - 283
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

Thanks very much to the editors of Language in Society and to two anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback.

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