Obesity in the News
Obesity in the News
Obesity is a pressing social issue and a persistently newsworthy topic for the media. This book examines the linguistic representation of obesity in the British press. It combines techniques from corpus linguistics with critical discourse studies to analyse a large corpus of newspaper articles (36 million words) representing ten years of obesity coverage. These articles are studied from a range of methodological perspectives, and analytical themes include variation between newspapers, change over time, diet and exercise, gender and social class. The volume also investigates the language that readers use when responding to obesity representations in the context of online comments. The authors reveal the power of linguistic choices to shame and stigmatise people with obesity, presenting them as irresponsible and morally deviant. Yet the analysis also demonstrates the potential for alternative representations which place greater focus on the role that social and political forces play in this topical health issue.
- The first book-length linguistic analysis of the representation of obesity in the press
- Examines how readers respond to news representations
- Combines numerous methodological and thematic perspectives on a large dataset (36 million words) of obesity news articles over a period of ten years
Product details
November 2021Adobe eBook Reader
9781108874892
0 pages
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The way in – shared keywords in the press
- 3. Studying difference – comparing sections of the press
- 4. Change over time
- 5. Shaming and reclaiming
- 6. Healthy body – diet and exercise
- 7. General discourses of obesity
- 8. 'A disease of the poor'? – obesity and social class
- 9. Going 'below the line' – reader responses
- 10. Conclusion.
