Abstract
This paper examines the discursive construction of market logic. Using Durkheim’s separation between sacred and profane spheres of social activity, I explore how public relations consultants present their commercial offerings in writing. An in-depth discourse analysis of industry-produced texts reveals how consultants use sophisticated, indirect strategies of discursive commodification. By skilfully 1) interpreting reality, 2) dramatizing it into compelling stories and 3) coupling vocabularies from ‘sacred’ discourses – on community, sports, love, and politics – with economic or ’profane’ ones, they creating and maintaining the market as a cognitive-cultural construct. Moreover, this ‘coupling’ strategy of 'sacralizing the profane' is found to bring about semiotic replacement, i.e. the manipulation of deep-seated cultural meaning systems by dissolving and reconnecting culturally established oppositions in language. The notion of ‘commodification work’ is proposed to denote such acts of discursive market logic construction, and the results are discussed in the light of an emerging cognitive-cultural capitalism.
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