ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how media is a reflexive and constitutive process of mediation. It examines the use of Cosmopolitan Mandarin (CM) in a television program on consumption and lifestyle. Such programs have become immensely popular in China. The chapter analyses the specific ways that CM is integral to emerging new social distinctions. It expresses that the television program mediates the construction of distinction by grouping a diverse range of signs—including consumer products and behaviors—and linking them to urban middle-class consumer personae and a cosmopolitan lifestyle. One type of social actor who plays a pivotal role in the semiotic process of mass mediation and mediatization of new social distinction is what Bourdieu refers to as "cultural intermediaries". The chapter provides a description of the television program. It analyses the linguistic characteristics of the hosts' talk. The chapter also expresses that metasemiotic discourse is a primary domain to examine how semiotic mediation is carried out in the making of new social distinction.
