Food ads and Socioeconomic identities

      According to Joshua Freedman and Dan Jurafsky, the authors of "Authenticity in America: Class Distinctions in Potato Chip Advertising", food is a striking marker of socioeconomic class identity. So in order to investigate the relationship between different food and different class identities through various food descriptions, the authors compared the advertisements of twelve common brands of potato chips in America, and analyzed the differences of the languages they use to appeal their respective customers with different statuses. Finally, they found the several facts which indeed can prove their initial assumption. Firstly, the more expensive chips, which are also those targeted at higher-class customers usually use more complex language than inexpensive chips, which aimed at lower-class customers. Because general speaking, the people who have higher status obtained higher educations. More expensive chips thus were designed with more complex language in order to attract more higher-class buyers who believe that the product is somehow conform to their educational levels. Secondly, advertisers used significantly more words or statements relating to health on expensive chip packaging than on inexpensive chip packaging, which is exactly corresponding to the research result that "in the United States and many other countries over the last 100 years have found higher mortality rates in people of lower-class status".(48) Moreover, expensive chip advertising is full of comparison and negation to distance the higher socioeconomic classes from lower socioeconomic classes and their tastes by establishing the distinction between upper-class food taste and lower-class food taste. Finally, upper class has different authentic forms from lower class. For most upper classes, authentic food refer to natural, healthy, and not artificial food; however, authentic food for working classes usually is American traditions or family traditions, and located in the American landscape. 
      Among the four outstanding differences of language in several potato chips advertisements according to different social classes, I was convinced that the people who have different statuses indeed have different tastes of food and different requirements for food. Food companies emphasize these differences in their advertisements in order to appeal customers with different statues. Furthermore, through the compare of these four aspects, I noticed that higher-class people have different educational levels, health conditions and opinions about authenticity from lower or working-class people in general. And more noteworthy situation is that most higher-class people attempt to extend the distance between themselves and lower-class people in various details.