Socially Constructing Healthy Eating: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of Healthy Eating Information and Advice

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973232110234
Author(s):  
Jo Mackenzie ◽  
Esther Murray
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Healthy Eating ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Nutritional Composition ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Moral Citizenship ◽  
Moral Discourses

A variety of materials offering healthy eating advice have been produced in the United Kingdom to encourage people to eat well and avoid diet-related health issues. By applying a Foucauldian discourse analysis, this research aimed to uncover the discourses used in six healthy eating texts (two state-produced and four commercial texts), how people positioned themselves in relation to these discourses, and the power relations between institutions and the U.K. public. Ten discourses including scientific, thermodynamics, natural, family/caring, emotional, medical, and moral discourses were uncovered and offered up subject positions in relation to moral citizenship and personal responsibility. Through the use of biopower, foods appeared to be categorized as “good” or “bad” foods in which bad foods were considered to be risky to health due to their nutritional composition. Most texts assumed people have the agency to follow the advice provided and failed to consider the readers’ personal contexts.

scholarly journals ‘Glow from the inside out’: Deliciously Ella and the politics of ‘healthy eating’

2020 ◽  
pp. 136754942092186
Author(s):  
Rachel O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Healthy Eating ◽  
Healthy Lifestyle ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Private Good ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Inside Out

This article examines the branded persona of Ella Mills, founder of the multi-platform, multi-product and multi-million pound food brand Deliciously Ella. It begins from the premise that Mills represents a new kind of cultural intermediary: that of the wellness entrepreneur. Through a discourse analysis of Mills’ own media productions alongside news and magazine features about the entrepreneur, I consider how ‘healthy eating’ is being sold to young women as a means to realise physical and financial empowerment. Commercial entrepreneurship is made to function in tandem with health entrepreneurship, as Mills makes it her business to model a healthy lifestyle and enjoins others to follow this example. The article further examines how the Deliciously Ella narrative perpetuates already dominant understandings of health as a private good and personal responsibility through its emphasis on healing and recovery through food. Relating this analysis to recent debates about the shifting terrain of postfeminism in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, I argue that the spotlighting of Mills elevates self-care as a gendered imperative while obfuscating the classed and racialised privileges that attend this.

scholarly journals A moral profession: Nurse educators’ selected narratives of care and compassion

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Newham ◽  
Louise Terry ◽  
Siobhan Atherley ◽  
Sinead Hahessy ◽  
Yolanda Babenko-Mould ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Nursing Care ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Nurse Educators ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Moral Vision ◽  
Moral Orientation ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Burden Of Caring

Background: Lack of compassion is claimed to result in poor and sometimes harmful nursing care. Developing strategies to encourage compassionate caring behaviours are important because there is evidence to suggest a connection between having a moral orientation such as compassion and resulting caring behaviour in practice. Objective: This study aimed to articulate a clearer understanding of compassionate caring via nurse educators’ selection and use of published texts and film. Methodology: This study employed discourse analysis. Participants and research context: A total of 41 nurse educators working in universities in the United Kingdom (n = 3), Ireland (n = 1) and Canada (n = 1) completed questionnaires on the narratives that shaped their understanding of care and compassion. Findings: The desire to understand others and how to care compassionately characterised educators’ choices. Most narratives were examples of kindness and compassion. A total of 17 emphasised the importance of connecting with others as a central component of compassionate caring, 10 identified the burden of caring, 24 identified themes of abandonment and of failure to see the suffering person and 15 narratives showed a discourse of only showing compassion to those ‘deserving’ often understood as the suffering person doing enough to help themselves. Discussion: These findings are mostly consistent with work in moral philosophy emphasising the particular or context and perception or vision as well as the necessity of emotions. The narratives themselves are used by nurse educators to help explicate examples of caring and compassion (or its lack). Conclusion: To feel cared about people need to feel ‘visible’ as though they matter. Nurses need to be alert to problems that may arise if their ‘moral vision’ is influenced by ideas of desert and how much the patient is doing to help himself or herself.

scholarly journals Social Media and Men’s Health: A Content Analysis of Twitter Conversations During the 2013 Movember Campaigns in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1627-1641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline A. Bravo ◽  
Laurie Hoffman-Goetz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
The United States ◽  
Men’S Health ◽  
Men's Health ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Health Related

The Movember Foundation raises awareness and funds for men’s health issues such as prostate and testicular cancers in conjunction with a moustache contest. The 2013 Movember campaigns in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom shared the same goal of creating conversations about men’s health that lead to increased awareness and understanding of the health risks men face. Our objective was to explore Twitter conversations to identify whether the 2013 Movember campaigns sparked global conversations about prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and other men’s health issues. We conducted a content analysis of 12,666 tweets posted during the 2013 Movember campaigns in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom (4,222 tweets from each country) to investigate whether tweets were health-related or non-health-related and to determine what topics dominated conversations. Few tweets ( n = 84, 0.7% of 12,666 tweets) provided content-rich or actionable health information that would lead to awareness and understanding of men’s health risks. While moustache growing and grooming was the most popular topic in U.S. tweets, conversations about community engagement were most common in Canadian and U.K. tweets. Significantly more tweets co-opted the Movember campaign to market products or contests in the United States than Canada and the United Kingdom ( p < .05). Findings from this content analysis of Twitter suggest that the 2013 Movember campaigns in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom sparked few conversations about prostate and testicular cancers that could potentially lead to greater awareness and understanding of important men’s health issues.

Pronominalization of Social Actors on Universities’ Websites: Effectiveness and Constitutiveness from a Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 184
Author(s):  
Selvarajah Tharmalingam ◽  
Ali M. Al-Wedyan
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class 1 ◽  
Vice Chancellors

<p class="1"><span lang="EN-GB">Discursive construction of staff identities at universities’ websites is deliberately created to categorically identify the staff according to their positions. The constructions of these identities are normally implicit in nature. The study attempts to identify the power relations with regard to the ‘WE’ and ‘I’ dichotomy in discourse from a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) perspective. In addition, corpus techniques also aided this study to find the collocates of these two pronouns. Transitivity analysis was conducted to categorise processes associated with each pronoun. So, the processes associated with each pronoun are a way of identifying the role played at the institution level. The focus was on specific personal pronouns ‘We’ and ‘I’ for their use, mainly, as inclusive and exclusive strategies. The data was collected from international universities’ websites. The text was selected from the ‘welcome note/letter’ by Rectors, Vice Rectors, Chancellors, Vice Chancellors, and Presidents. The universities selected for this study are from various geographical areas, namely; Universiti Science Malaysia (USM) in Malaysia, Yarmouk University (YU) in Jordan, and University of Birmingham (UB) in the United Kingdom. The analysis indicates that the use of the pronouns has a social and administrative hierarchical significance. The social actors are represented according to the specified role to play in their respective institutions.</span></p>

Discourses in Gender and Technology

2009 ◽  
pp. 2296-2308
Author(s):  
Sheila French
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Gender Segregation ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Gender And Technology ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Dominant Discourses

The majority of women are not involved in the design, manufacturing or shaping of technology in many Western societies. This is at a time when governments globally see technology as an enabler to economic success. Using feminist scholarship and discourse analysis, this chapter questions why patterns of gender segregation prevail in technology related fields in the United Kingdom. The chapter critically analyses why government policy, and equal opportunities initiatives, have so far largely failed to increase women’s participation. Using examples taken from two educational settings, the chapter uses the narratives of individual’s experiences of technology, their engagement, or lack of engagement with it, to examine the dominant discourses of the field. It is argued that technology discourses, which shape our understanding and identity with technology, are gendered. It is argued that current policies and initiatives, based on giving women equality of access will continue to make little difference. Until gendered dominant discourses of technology are deconstructed and examined; we will not have the tools to address the current situation of gender segregation.

Nutritional composition of commonly consumed composite dishes for Afro-Caribbeans (mainly Jamaicans) in the United Kingdom

2009 ◽  
Vol 60 (sup7) ◽  
pp. 140-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sangita Sharma ◽  
Sangita Sharma ◽  
Mihoko M. Yacavone ◽  
Xia Cao ◽  
Sangita Sharma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Nutritional Composition ◽  
The United Kingdom
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