When Less Is More: The Semiotic Privilege of Status Downplay

Abstract

Why do affluent people drive used cars, elite chefs praise basic ingredients, and upper‐middle couples arrange backyard weddings? What makes senior professors feel comfortable dressing down and allows men to bring their kids into the office? This article takes a formal sociological approach to explore the cultural phenomenon of “Status Downplay”—a paradoxical type of status display, where more social status is signaled through a subtraction of status symbols. The trans‐contextual analysis of diverse manifestations of status downplay uncovers the inverted cultural presumptions of “doing” and “being” and the hierarchical classifications underlying such parodical presentation of self. The proposed semiotic model articulates the social privilege of unmarked actors' performative flexibility: the social license of those considered “normals” to deviate from the performative norm. Under this asymmetrical structure, status underdoings are revealed as markers of cultural dominance.