Everyone Loves Chips

Freedman and Jurafsky’s research make deep inroads into how language and culture are connected. What their work suggests is that there is a distinction between the language used by the higher socio-economic classes and the lower ones. Food advertisers take advantage of this distinction by marketing specific brands to each class through use of class-specific diction on the packaging. One of the most interesting points they made is the connection between health, class and food advertising. It is a well-documented fact that members of a higher demographic usually lead much healthier lives. Freedman and Jurafsky postulate that more expensive chips employ diction such as “natural” or “zero trans fat” on the packaging while less expensive chips forgo phrases such as those. The chips then appear healthier when really all chips are similar in healthiness despite who they are marketed to.

The methods Freedman and Jurafsky’s applied to potato chips can be used with almost any mass-marketed product. I could imagine it being used with diapers and other baby-care products. Similar to potato chips, diapers are a necessity for both upper and lower class families. I would suspect that the findings would correlate with their previous study in that different brands employ varied diction and word complexity to appeal to different socio-economic classes.