Aligned with renewed commitments to class critique in sociolinguistics and discourse studies, I examine premium as a floating signifier. My initial semiotic landscape analysis demonstrates how this word is attached to any number of goods/services, coaxing people into a sense of distinction and superior status. These language games occur most vividly in my second analytic site—Premium Economy—where status is fabricated as tangibly but not too obviously distinct from Economy while preserving the prestige of Business. From a corpus of over forty international airlines’ promotional materials, I pinpoint three key rhetorics underpinning Premium Economy: extraction, excess, and comparison. My analysis locates premium as a quintessential form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1997/2000) deployed for controlling people by seducing, flattering, and enchanting them. The anxious bourgeoisie are thereby ‘joyfully enlisted’ (Lordon 2014) into the aspirational logics of elitism, all animated by the tenacious neoliberal ideologies of a supposedly post-class world. (Elite discourse, post-class ideology, floating signifiers, Frédéric Lordon ‘premium’, Premium Economy)*

中文翻译：

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剖析精英主义的语言：溢价的“快乐”暴力

与对社会语言学和话语研究中的阶级批评的新承诺保持一致，我研究优质的作为一个浮动的能指。我最初的符号学景观分析表明，这个词是如何与任何数量的商品/服务联系在一起的，从而诱使人们产生一种区别感和优越地位。这些语言游戏在我的第二个分析站点——Premium Economy 中表现得最为生动——在该站点中，地位被捏造得与经济有明显区别，但并没有太明显的区别，同时保留了企业的声望。从超过 40 家国际航空公司的宣传材料中，我确定了支持豪华经济舱的三个关键言论：提取、过剩和比较。我的分析定位优质的作为象征性暴力的典型形式（Bourdieu 1997/2000），通过引诱、奉承和迷惑人们来控制人们。焦虑的资产阶级因此被“快乐地招募”（Lordon 2014）进入精英主义的理想逻辑，所有这些都被所谓的后阶级世界顽强的新自由主义意识形态所激发。（精英话语、后阶级意识形态、浮动能指、Frédéric Lordon 'premium'、Premium Economy）*