Elite Discourse considers the ways in which elite status and 'eliteness' are depicted in language and communication, and the way in which language and communication are deployed for two elitist ends: the production of privilege, and the maintenance of inequality. This book was originally published as a special issue of Social Semiotics.

Introducing elite discourse: the rhetorics of status, privilege, and power 1. Discourses in conflict: resource inequality, class warfare and home repossessions 2. Elite schools, class disavowal and the mystification of virtues 3. Mediatizing the "super-rich," normalizing privilege 4. Beyond the "gentry aesthetic": elites, Received Pronunciation and the dialectological gaze 5. Walking plutocratic London: exploring erotic, phantasmagoric Mayfair 6. Stinking to high heaven: olfactory aspirations and discourses of desire 7. The neoliberal definition of "elite space" in IKEA kitchens 8. Racial ideology as elite discourse: Nordicism and the visual in an age of mass culture 9. Elite discourses of conservation in Tanzania 10. Multilingualism and cosmopolitanism in the construction of a humanitarian elite 11. Differentiated eliteness: socialization for academic leadership

Crispin Thurlow is Professor of Language and Communication in the Department of English at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Adam Jaworski is Chair Professor of Sociolinguistics in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. ¿