Book : when the background music in a TV or radio automobile commercial is classical. you can be pretty certain that the ad is pitching a Lexus or a Mercedes. when its country western. its probably /or 1)odge or Chey. English accents are popular in jaguar ads, while a good western twang sure helps move pickup trucks. whenever advertisers make use of status-oriented or common-folk-oriented cultural cues, they are playing on one of America s most fundamental contradictions, as jack Solomon explains in this cultural analysis of American advertising. The contradiction is between the simultan noos? desire /or social superiority (elitism) and social equality (populism) that lies at the heart of the American dream. And one way or another: it offers a good way to pitch a product. Solomon. a professor of English at Cal![ornia State University, Northridge. is the author of The Signs of Our Time (1988), from which this selection is taken, and Discourse and Refereence in the Nuclear Age (1988,).