scholarly journals Empowering People to Make Healthier Choices: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Tackling Obesity Policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973232110275
Author(s):  
Gavin Brookes
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Health Management ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Economic Determinants ◽  
Policy Paper ◽  
Obesity Policy ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology ◽  
Public Health Management

In response to the heightened risk that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses to the health and lives of people with obesity, in 2020 the U.K. government launched a new package of policies intended to stimulate weight loss among the country’s population. In this article, I present a critical discourse analysis of the policy paper which announced these new measures. I identify the discourses that are used to represent things, people, and processes in this policy text. These discourses are interpreted in terms of broadly neoliberal ideologies of public health management. Taken together, the discourses identified contribute to a broadly neoliberal ideology of public health management. It is argued that the policy paper represents an instance of “lifestyle drift,” as it initially appears to engage with social and economic determinants of health but ultimately neglects these in favor of focusing on individual lifestyle factors, particularly in the shape of individuals’ “choices.”

scholarly journals Invisible labour

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Student Engagement ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
University Policy ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Human Labour ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology ◽  
Policy Texts

The ‘academic orthodoxy’ (Brookfield 1986) of student engagement is questioned by Zepke, who suggests that it supports ‘a neoliberal ideology’ (2014: 698). In reply, Trowler argues that Zepke fails to explain the mechanisms linking neoliberalism to the concepts and practices of student engagement (2015: 336). In this article, I respond to the Zepke-Trowler debate with an analysis of student engagement policies that illuminates the role of discourse as one mechanism linking neoliberal values with practices of student engagement. Through a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis, I demonstrate a persistent and alarming omission of human labour from university policy texts. Instead, the engagements of students and staff are attributed to technology, documents and frameworks. Student engagement is discussed as a commodity to be embedded and marketed back to students in a way that yields an ‘exchange value’ (Marx 1867) for universities.

scholarly journals Round hole, square peg: a discourse analysis of social inequalities and the political legitimization of health technology in Norway

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Health Technology ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Round Hole ◽  
Central State ◽  
National Public Health

Abstract Background As research increasingly investigates the impacts of technological innovations in health on social inequalities, political discourse often promotes development and adoption, limiting an understanding of unintended consequences. This study aimed to investigate national public health policy discourse focusing on innovative health technology and social inequalities, from a Norwegian context. Methods The analysis relies on a perspective inspired by critical discourse analysis using central State documents typically influential in the lawmaking procedure. Results The results and discussion focus on three major discourse strands: 1) ‘technologies discourse’ (types of technologies), 2) ‘responsibility discourse’ (who has responsibility for health and technology), 3) ‘legitimization discourse’ (how technologies are legitimized). Conclusions Results suggest that despite an overt political imperative for reducing social inequalities, the Norwegian national discourse gives little attention to the potential for these innovations to unintentionally (re) produce social inequalities. Instead, it is characterized by neoliberal undertones, individualizing and commercializing public health and promoting pro-innovation ideology.

Ireland’s Public Health (Alcohol) Bill

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Calnan ◽  
Martin P. Davoren ◽  
Ivan J. Perry ◽  
Órla O’Donovan
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Critical Mode ◽  
Significant Development ◽  
Paradigmatic Shift ◽  
The Public ◽  
Hybrid Forms

The proposal to introduce a Public Health (Alcohol) Bill marks a significant development in Ireland’s alcohol policymaking landscape. While the Bill has generated support from public health advocates, it has also raised considerable opposition, particularly from industry. This analysis aims to examine the debate around this Bill using the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis and applying Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented To Be critical mode of analysis. A key objective is to analyze the current prevailing representations of alcohol and its regulation in Ireland but also to consider what they reveal about the underlying governing rationality in relation to alcohol regulation. In particular, it questions whether the Bill signals a shift in the official governing rationality regarding alcohol regulation. The analysis illustrates how alcohol is problematized in markedly different ways in the debates and how such debates are often underpinned by multifaceted elements. Despite such differences, it argues that there are still signs of a neoliberal rhetoric emerging within the public health discourses, raising a question over whether the Bill and its supporting discourses signal a paradigmatic shift or are more indicative of a policy embracing hybrid forms of rule.

‘Keep calm, stay safe, and drink bubble tea’: Commodifying the crisis of Covid-19 in Singapore advertising

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Rebecca Lurie Starr ◽  
Christian Go ◽  
Vincent Pak
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Consumer Behaviors ◽  
Asian Nation ◽  
New Framework

Abstract Advertisements employ multimodal configurations of semiotic resources in an effort to lead consumers to draw particular meanings from desired consumption behaviors. This analysis examines the deployment of such resources in advertising during the global Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on the Southeast Asian nation of Singapore. We identify five discourses that offer distinct framings of Covid-19 as a challenge for workers, a wellness issue, a threat to home and family, a challenge for women, and a threat to the Singapore lifestyle. Undergirded by neoliberal notions such as the productivity imperative, these discourses rationalize a range of consumer behaviors as necessary and justified in the struggle to defeat the virus. Advertisements are argued to place the burden of navigating the pandemic primarily on women via the evocation of power femininity. We propose a new framework, crisis commodification, as a means of understanding the ideological mechanisms at play in Covid-19 advertising. (Critical discourse analysis, crisis commodification, semiotic analysis, advertising, public health, Southeast Asia)*

Ambiguous discursive practices in health-care project plans: a keyword-assisted critical discourse analysis of the term “patient”

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Lunkka ◽  
Pirjo Lukkarila ◽  
Sanna Laulainen ◽  
Marjo Suhonen
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Public Health Care ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Health Care Context ◽  
Care Project

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to investigate ambiguous language use in health-care project plans in a manner that accounts for the wider, institutional, public health-care context.Design/methodology/approachThe article deployed a case study approach and drew from Fairclough's critical discourse analysis (CDA) as well as a keyword analysis to investigate two time-sequenced versions of the same project planning document for a health-care project in Finland.FindingsIn the project plans investigated, the study identified patient as a keyword possessing various meanings within the public health-care context. By examining the discursive practices around the keyword patient, the study demonstrated their role in constituting the institutional context as well as the function of this context in constraining these practices.Originality/valueBy looking at the potential of the CDA to investigate discursive practices of the keyword in two sequential versions of a project plan within the broader context of public health care, the study adds to the scant existing literature on critically oriented health-care project communication studies.

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