scholarly journals Controlling The Monster: Exploring Constructions Of Women And Their Bodies In Endometriosis Apps

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hannah Quigan

<p>People globally increasingly use digital applications (apps) to manage their health and health conditions. In particular, women commonly use apps to understand and manage female reproductive issues. Some apps target women with endometriosis, a common but poorly understood condition primarily affecting women. The aim of the current research was to explore how endometriosis apps constructed endometriosis and people with endometriosis, how people with endometriosis were positioned, and the potential implications of this positioning for app users. Multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) was used to systematically examine dominant meanings produced by visual and linguistic features (i.e. colour, imagery, text and interactive app functionality) of five endometriosis apps from the USA, New Zealand and Singapore. Results demonstrated that apps drew on biomedical and biological discourses to construct endometriosis as a complex and confusing disease of the female reproductive body. This positioned biomedical and natural health professionals as knowledgeable experts about endometriosis while minimising women’s experiential knowledge of their bodies. Apps drew on intersecting postfeminist, neoliberal and healthist discourses to construct women with endometriosis as responsible for self-tracking many physical, emotional and behavioural experiences. Self-tracking was constructed as generating data that was meaningfully interpreted by app algorithms and experts to help women understand and manage their endometriosis. Dominant management recommendations (i.e. biomedical interventions; lifestyle changes) aligned with hegemonic ideals of traditional and neoliberal femininity. These findings align with previous feminist research findings that mainstream endometriosis discourse reflects androcentric biases in medical knowledge and that health apps targeting women often reinforce neoliberal and postfeminist ideals. Therefore, dominant discourses about endometriosis and female biology that pathologise women’s bodies and behaviours limit the potential for apps to offer women empowered and agentic subject positions.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hannah Quigan

<p>People globally increasingly use digital applications (apps) to manage their health and health conditions. In particular, women commonly use apps to understand and manage female reproductive issues. Some apps target women with endometriosis, a common but poorly understood condition primarily affecting women. The aim of the current research was to explore how endometriosis apps constructed endometriosis and people with endometriosis, how people with endometriosis were positioned, and the potential implications of this positioning for app users. Multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) was used to systematically examine dominant meanings produced by visual and linguistic features (i.e. colour, imagery, text and interactive app functionality) of five endometriosis apps from the USA, New Zealand and Singapore. Results demonstrated that apps drew on biomedical and biological discourses to construct endometriosis as a complex and confusing disease of the female reproductive body. This positioned biomedical and natural health professionals as knowledgeable experts about endometriosis while minimising women’s experiential knowledge of their bodies. Apps drew on intersecting postfeminist, neoliberal and healthist discourses to construct women with endometriosis as responsible for self-tracking many physical, emotional and behavioural experiences. Self-tracking was constructed as generating data that was meaningfully interpreted by app algorithms and experts to help women understand and manage their endometriosis. Dominant management recommendations (i.e. biomedical interventions; lifestyle changes) aligned with hegemonic ideals of traditional and neoliberal femininity. These findings align with previous feminist research findings that mainstream endometriosis discourse reflects androcentric biases in medical knowledge and that health apps targeting women often reinforce neoliberal and postfeminist ideals. Therefore, dominant discourses about endometriosis and female biology that pathologise women’s bodies and behaviours limit the potential for apps to offer women empowered and agentic subject positions.</p>


2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jieyun Feng ◽  
Doreen D. Wu

The present study aims to unveil the changing ideologies in contemporary China from a micro discursive perspective, focusing on a case study of the changing advertising discourses in Nanfang Daily, a typical Communist Party newspaper in Guangdong province, P. R. China. Advertising discourse has long been considered as a socio-cultural artifact and most of the previous researches are confined to its socio-cultural functions. By taking a broader ideological perspective, the present study adopts the fundamental principle of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and developed an integrated framework, which links the value appeals and linguistic practice with an investigation of the different power groups having access to the advertising discourses in two different socio-historical settings of China — 1980 versus 2002. It is found that the danwei-dominated advertising discourses in 1980 were characterized by the prevalent use of utilitarian values and by the rare use of interactive lexico-grammatical features. In 2002, in sharp contrast, the individual-consumption dominated advertising discourses manifested itself with an escalated use of hedonistic value appeals and of interactive linguistic features. The changes in value appeals and linguistic practices reflect that different power groups in the advertising discourses have different needs and interests in the specific socio-historical settings. Finally, the study places the research findings within the landscape of the hybridized and competing ideologies in China and in the accelerated globalization.


2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. James Barnard

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the USA and an abundance of evidence suggests that lifestyle factors including smoking, the typical high-fat, refined-sugar diet and physical inactivity account for the majority of cancer. This review focuses on diet and inactivity as major factors for cancer promotion by inducing insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. Elevated levels of serum insulin impact on the liver primarily, increasing the production of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) while reducing the production of insulin-like growth factor binding protein 1 (IGFBP-1) resulting in stimulation of tumor cell growth and inhibition of apoptosis (programmed cell death). Adopting a diet low in fat and high in fiber-rich starch foods, which would also include an abundance of antioxidants, combined with regular aerobic exercise might control insulin resistance, reduce the resulting serum factors and thus reduce the risk for many different cancers commonly seen in the USA.


2021 ◽  
pp. medethics-2020-106856
Author(s):  
Harald Schmidt ◽  
Dorothy E Roberts ◽  
Nwamaka D Eneanya

Withholding or withdrawing life-saving ventilators can become necessary when resources are insufficient. In the USA, such rationing has unique social justice dimensions. Structural elements of dominant allocation frameworks simultaneously advantage white communities, and disadvantage Black communities—who already experience a disproportionate burden of COVID-19-related job losses, hospitalisations and mortality. Using the example of New Jersey’s Crisis Standard of Care policy, we describe how dominant rationing guidance compounds for many Black patients prior unfair structural disadvantage, chiefly due to the way creatinine and life expectancy are typically considered.We outline six possible policy options towards a more just approach: improving diversity in decision processes, adjusting creatinine scores, replacing creatinine, dropping creatinine, finding alternative measures, adding equity weights and rejecting the dominant model altogether. We also contrast these options with making no changes, which is not a neutral default, but in separate need of justification, despite a prominent claim that it is simply based on ‘objective medical knowledge’. In the regrettable absence of fair federal guidance, hospital and state-level policymakers should reflect on which of these, or further options, seem feasible and justifiable.Irrespective of which approach is taken, all guidance should be supplemented with a monitoring and reporting requirement on possible disparate impacts. The hope that we will be able to continue to avoid rationing ventilators must not stand in the way of revising guidance in a way that better promotes health equity and racial justice, both to be prepared, and given the significant expressive value of ventilator guidance.


Multilingua ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Shenk

AbstractThis article examines the perspectives of Puerto Ricans living in the United States in response to a publicity campaign that focuses on the correction of linguistic features that appear in some Puerto Ricans’ spoken Spanish. The campaign addresses phonetic, morphological, lexical, and syntactic features, including a specific set of words or phrases that are named as lexical and semantic borrowings from English. Participants were invited to respond to the content and ideologies present in the campaign by means of semi-structured interviews. Through a framework of Critical Discourse Analysis and language (de)legitimation, the article analyzes the ways in which interviewees (de)legitimize loanwords in Puerto Rican Spanish. A Critical Discourse Analytical framework allows for the mapping of spoken and written texts (e. g. the campaign texts) onto discourses


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-275
Author(s):  
Mustafa Menshawy

Abstract In this article, I examine a corpus of texts that address the 1973 war; these texts cover the period from 1981 to 2011, marking the beginning and end of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Utilizing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I explore how Mubarak’s regime employed the war to legitimize its power and defend its policies by deploying longstanding culturally-embedded ‘macro themes’. These macro themes refer to the war as an overwhelming and undisputed ‘Egyptian victory’ and, more significantly, they portray Mubarak himself as ‘war personified/war personalized’. The analysis of linguistic and extra-linguistic features in al-Ahram newspaper (the mouthpiece of the state), among other media texts on the war, show how the discursive construction was made consistent, coherent and resonant in a managed context that characterized the political and media landscapes. Depending on unique access to those who produced, edited and even censored the texts under analysis, this method unravels a complex set of cultural messages and conventions about the war, and fills a lacuna in the literature by offering insight into the deliberate and well-coordinated process of shaping and reshaping a specific discourse for a specific purpose.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Imron Hizbullah ◽  
Muhammad Taufiq Al Makmun

<em>This paper investigates the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in studying the inauguration speech of Donald Trump at the Capitol Hill, Washington DC on January 20, 2017. The objective of the study is to uncover the hidden messages regarding ideologies shared and critiques appointed to Obama’s presidency. The paper uses the theory of CDA by Norman Fairclough by focusing on the three aspects of research which are (1) micro or linguistic analysis, (2) Mezzo or discursive analysis, and (3) macro or contextual analysis. The three dimensional model of CDA is aimed to uncover the ideologies shared and critiques appointed to based on linguistic features, socio-political aspect, and discursive practice. The American Dream is represented in seven issues risen which are (1) US economic condition during Obama’s presidency, (2) US political condition during Obama’s presidency, (3) US social condition during Obama’s presidency, (4) The concept of making America great again, (5) Anti-radical Muslim immigrants, (6) America First, and (7) Nationalism. The result of the study reveals that the speech brought some ideologies or thoughts shared to the audiences and might change the people’s perception on Obama’s two periods of presidency who is considered as failure.</em>


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nisreen Naji Al-Khawaldeh ◽  
Imad Khawaldeh ◽  
Baker Bani-Khair ◽  
Amal Al-Khawaldeh

Graffiti have received a great attention from scholars as they have been considered a vital cultural phenomenon for many years (Trahan, 2011; Divsalar & Nemati, 2012; Zakareviciute, 2014; Farnia, 2014; El-Nashar & Nayef; 2016). Although there are extensive contemporary researches on graffiti in many disciplines, such as linguistics, cultural studies, politics, art, and communication (Pietrosanti, 2010;  Farnia, 2014; Oganda, 2015), there are few studies exploring graffiti on classrooms’ walls in higher education milieus (Farnia, 2014). To the best knowledge of the researchers, very few studies were done on the Jordanian context (e.g. Al-Haj Eid, 2008; Abu-Jaber, et al., 2012) and none was done on the Jordanian universities. Therefore, this study aims at analysing the content and communicative features of writings found on universities’ classrooms’ walls, corridors, and washrooms and their relation to the socio-cultural values of the society in order to explore how universities help students voice their attitudes and thoughts. The linguistic features that characterise these writings were also examined. Graffiti-writings, which were collected from the University of Jordan and the Hashemite University, were coded and analysed using the thematic content analysis technique (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995). The analysis of the data has shown that graffiti serve different communicative language functions related to personal, social, national, religious, political, and taboo matters. The most salient linguistic features of these graffiti are simplicity and variation. It can be concluded that graffiti are distinctive and silent ways of communication, particularly in students’ society. The study will be of great importance to linguists, sociologists, educators, administrators, teachers and parents. It is enrichment to the available literature on linguistic studies.


2008 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
C Mukhtyar ◽  
L Guillevin ◽  
M C Cid ◽  
B Dasgupta ◽  
K de Groot ◽  
...  

Objectives:To develop European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) recommendations for the management of large vessel vasculitis.Methods:An expert group (10 rheumatologists, 3 nephrologists, 2 immunolgists, 2 internists representing 8 European countries and the USA, a clinical epidemiologist and a representative from a drug regulatory agency) identified 10 topics for a systematic literature search through a modified Delphi technique. In accordance with standardised EULAR operating procedures, recommendations were derived for the management of large vessel vasculitis. In the absence of evidence, recommendations were formulated on the basis of a consensus opinion.Results:Seven recommendations were made relating to the assessment, investigation and treatment of patients with large vessel vasculitis. The strength of recommendations was restricted by the low level of evidence and EULAR standardised operating procedures.Conclusions:On the basis of evidence and expert consensus, management recommendations for large vessel vasculitis have been formulated and are commended for use in everyday clinical practice.


2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 423-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evgeniya Aleshinskaya

Abstract Musical discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary study which is incomplete without consideration of relevant social, linguistic, psychological, visual, gestural, ritual, technical, historical and musicological aspects. In the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, musical discourse can be interpreted as social practice: it refers to specific means of representing specific aspects of the social (musical) sphere. The article introduces a general view of contemporary musical discourse, and analyses genres from the point of ‘semiosis’, ‘social agents’, ‘social relations’, ‘social context’, and ‘text’. These components of musical discourse analysis, in their various aspects and combinations, should help thoroughly examine the context of contemporary musical art, and determine linguistic features specific to different genres of musical discourse.


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