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The experience of pregnancy and motherhood is complex and changeable, marked by feelings of fulfilment, growth, and joy, but also depression, stress, anxiety, increased conflict, and regret. Yet the chaotic realities of motherhood remain taboo subjects, rarely discussed, in society and across the media. This paper shows how discussion forums can work as powerful outlets to capture the meaningful expression of viewpoints that mothers may not feel able to articulate or confess elsewhere. These anonymous online spaces offer a supportive space where the reality of the often-hidden maternal experience can be communicated, in resistance to the dominant narratives reinforcing the idea of the “good” mother. Analysis of UK forum Mumsnet suggests that public digital communities provide a valuable space to explore a socially relevant research area relating to maternal suicide and lived experience. This paper responds to a need to understand how women discuss suicidal thoughts, facilitating an understanding of the hidden discourse around motherhood. Through thematic analysis of Mumsnet posts (n = 4,186), five themes were identified: escaping the burden of motherhood; motherhood or pregnancy trauma as a trigger; feeling that children would be better off without them; children being a reason to live; and perceived shameful thoughts leading to silenced feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are growing numbers of non-binary youth in the U.K. with increasing representation, whilst simultaneously forms of gender diversity are being heavily regulated. Non-binary youth face unique challenges regarding their gender development due to age-based expectations for single and stable identities, and the gender binary. This article explores the regulation of gender identity borders and how non-binary youth navigate these. Ten non-binary youth living in the U.K. aged 16–21 years old took part in semi-structured individual interviews. Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis was used to explore forms of regulation through discourse analysis whilst also tracing the personal experiences through the discursive realms by constructing I poems. The analysis highlights how a non-binary gender provides freedom from the gender binary for identity development and understanding of oneself in context. However, the freedom provided by non-binary identities is precarious and risks being regulated by individualism and attempts to shame, which cause youth to censor their gender diversities. The research contributes to non-binary theory by focusing on the intersection of age to highlight the discursive realms and voiced experiences of non-binary identity development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of words to label concepts is a weak point in CMT but one which is little discussed. This article considers the relative merits of image and writing as semiotic modes for identifying conceptual metaphor domains and whether image can offer an alternative to target is source formulae. It reports on an experiment in which MA translation students draw composite drawings to represent orientational metaphoric aspects of a UK government press release. Conventional metaphoric language deriving from the orientational metaphors, especially good is up/bad is down, plays a significant role across this text, forming a "metaphor chain" pattern. The drawings and post-task interviews with the participants reveal details of the internal structure of the source domain up and how it is conceptualized. Particularly of note is the strong horizontal forward aspect of orientation which emerges when the written text is represented pictorially. The article demonstrates how drawing can be used as a tool in metaphor-led discourse analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do governments visually communicate policies, and what does this reveal about actors' political objectives? Governments strategically narrate their priorities, yet few studies examine this process through visual modes. We contribute to theoretical and empirical understanding in policy studies by focusing on the UK government's COVID-19 response through its daily press briefings during the first wave of 2020. Combining quantitative changepoint and content analysis with qualitative discourse analysis, we examine all 79 sets of slides when briefings occurred. We identify a reactive phase focused on communicating knowledge about the pandemic in a boundedly rational manner, and a proactive phase that created new policy-based narratives of the pandemic. Besides contributing to emerging pandemic-related policy scholarship, we argue that conceiving these visualizations as visual narrative assemblages is relevant more broadly because it shifts attention to the interaction and interdependence of multiple visualizations as they enable policymakers to perform their authority to govern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined how four hunting organizations in Finland and in the UK (The Finnish Wildlife Agency, Finnish Hunters' Association, The British Association for Shooting and Conservation, and Countryside Alliance) describe wild animals on their web pages and what the moral implications of these descriptions are. How do these hunting organizations define animals, and how does this impact the moral regard given to these animals? Using discourse analysis together with philosophical analysis, our examination revealed that the descriptions focus mainly on physical attributes, leaving out the minds of animals. Therefore, hunting organizations take part in dementalization (underestimation or denial of minds) of nonhuman animals, which interlinks with mechanomorphism (the depiction of animals as biological machines). We argue that dementalization and mechanomorphism in the descriptions serve a strategic purpose, as they hinder the possibility of recognizing animal experiences and individuality and keep animal ethical questions out of view. Further, the organizations tend to approach the ethics of hunting through the perspective of human interests only, whilst the interests and inherent value of animals are sidelined. In sum, the way in which hunting organizations depict animals is prone to sidelining ethical issues concerning the killing of animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the experiences of Beth, a university student in the UK, as she comes to be labelled as 'dyslexic', and as she has her diagnosis taken away. Through use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and discourse analysis, the research seeks to understand how Beth made sense of these experiences, and to explore the discursive 'life' of dyslexia within this sense-making. The discussion in this paper proceeds chronologically through Beth's story, from 'struggle', to 'legitimation' to 'derogation', and concludes with a call to recognise the role of diagnosis in the field of special educational needs (SEN) from a social constructionist and relational perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]