prof. Dong Jie (Peking): Taste, discourse, and the making of middle class identities

This study adopts Bourdieu’s conceptualization of taste and distinction in the examination of the discursive construction of Chinese middle class identities. Drawing on an ethnographic fieldwork of urban young professionals who display a shared passion for Saab cars, this paper presents three examples to instantiate the ways that the participants employ linguistic and discursive resources to construct an urban middle class identity revolving around consumption and commodification. The examples point to the importance of language in indexing taste and in negotiating and constructing emergent middle class identities among Chinese urban young professionals.