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Previous research has indicated that healthcare support for sexuality after spinal cord injury appears to be neglected or inadequately provided. The perspectives of people living with spinal cord injuries regarding what is lacking and what support they would like to be provided, and why, has yet to be explored. This paper uses critical theory to explore how societal constructs of sexuality and disability shape how sexuality is supported after a spinal cord injury. To do this, we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 11 people with a spinal cord injury from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We drew from the works of various critical disability theorists to analyze what discourses underpinned the experiences people with spinal cord injuries had when receiving sexuality support. Analysis suggested that the following discourses were apparent: (1) broken bodies require repair, (2) sex is penetration, ejaculation then reproduction, and (3) sexual autonomy is required. Findings indicated healthcare professionals need to recognize people with spinal cord injuries as sexual beings with a diverse range of desires, lives, relations, and bodies. Provision of individualized comprehensive high-quality sexuality support is therefore warranted. To achieve this, healthcare professionals should aim to be aware of, and mitigate, ableist and normative assumptions. [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]

Previous research has established that the success of strikes, and social movements more broadly, depends on their ability to garner support from the public. However, there is scant published research investigating the response of the public to strike action by healthcare workers. In this study, we address this gap through a study of public responses to UK nursing strikes in 2022–2023, using a data set drawn from Twitter of more than 2300 publicly available tweets. We focus on negative tweets, investigating which societal discourses social media users draw on to oppose strike action by nurses. Using a combination of corpus‐based approaches and discourse analysis, we identified five categories of opposition: (i) discourse discrediting nurses; (ii) discourse discrediting strikes by nurses; (iii) discourse on the National Health System; (iv) discourse about the fairness of strikers' demands and (v) discourse about potential harmful impact. Our findings show how social media users operationalise wider societal discourses about the nursing profession (e.g., associations with care, gender, vocation and sacrifice) as well as recent crises such as the Covid‐19 pandemic to justify their opposition. The results also provide valuable insights into misconceptions about nursing, strike action and patient harm, which can inform strategies for public communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Children and young people with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions have multidimensional needs and heterogenous cognitive and communicative abilities. There is limited evidence to support clinicians to tailor their communication to each individual child. Aim: To explore the language children and young people use to describe their own condition, to inform strategies for discussing needs and priorities. Design: Positioned within a s ocial constructivist paradigm, a secondary discourse analysis of s emi-structured interview data was conducted incorporating the discourse dynamics approach for figurative language. Setting/participants: A total of 26 children and young people aged 5–17 years with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions (6 cancer; 20 non-cancer) were recruited from nine clinical services (six hospitals and three hospices) across two UK nations. Results: The language children and young people use positions them as 'experts in their condition'. They combine medical terminology with their preferred terms for their body to describe symptoms and treatments, and use comparatives and superlatives to communicate their health status. Their language depicts their condition as a 'series of (functional and social) losses', which single them out from their peers as 'the sick one'. Older children and young people also incorporate figurative language to expand their descriptions. Conclusion/discussion: Children and young people can provide rich descriptions of their condition. Paying attention to their lexical choices, and converging one's language towards theirs, may enable more child-centred discussions. Expanding discussions about 'what matters most' with consideration of the losses and differences they have experienced may facilitate a fuller assessment of their concerns, preferences and priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Impaired discourse production is commonly reported for individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Discourse deficits can negatively impact community integration, return to employment and quality of life. COVID‐19 restrictions have reduced in‐person assessment services for people with communication impairments. Advances in telehealth may help speech and language therapists (SLTs) to assess monologic discourse more systematically and improve access to services for patients who may find it difficult to attend in‐person. Aims: To examine the feasibility of telehealth administration of narrative and procedural discourse tasks with individuals with TBI and matched controls. Methods & Procedures: A total of 20 individuals with TBI and 20 healthy controls, aged 18–55 years, were directly recruited from the UK and indirectly recruited from the US. For participants with TBI, time post‐injury was at least 3 months with no diagnosis of aphasia. Control participants were matched for sex and as closely as possible for age. Feasibility of measures was based upon the time to administer both narrative tasks, the report of any technological problems, and participant feed. Discourse samples were transcribed verbatim and analysed using story grammar analysis (for narrative discourse) and identification of propositions (for procedural discourse). Interrater reliability was calculated using percentage agreement for 50% of the data. Non‐parametric analyses were used to analyse the performance of the two groups. Outcomes & Results: Narrative and procedural discourse samples were collected via telehealth in approximately 10 min with no reported technical difficulties or complaints from any participants. For narrative discourse performance, there were significant differences for the TBI and control groups for measures of complete episodes (p < 0.001) and missing episodes (p = 0.005). No significant group differences were noted for any of the procedural discourse measures. Conclusions & Implications: Results support the feasibility of collecting discourse samples via telehealth. Although the participants' discourse performance distinguished the TBI and control groups on the narrative task, no differences between the groups were noted for the procedural task. The narrative discourse task may have been more difficult than the procedural task, or video cue support reduced the cognitive load of the procedural task. This finding suggests the use of more complex procedural tasks without video cue support may be needed. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on this subject: Although little research has explored the feasibility of administering discourse assessments for individuals with TBI via telehealth, some studies have found that discourse interventions can be feasibly administered via telehealth. It is also well established that individuals with TBI struggle with the supra‐structural and macro‐linguistic elements of discourse production. Both procedural and narrative discourse tasks have been found to differentiate individuals with TBI from healthy controls. What this paper adds to existing knowledge: Few studies have investigated the feasibility of, and procedures for, administering discourse tasks via telehealth. Additionally, the inclusion of multiple types of discourse tasks to parse cognitive–communication abilities is lacking in the current literature. Findings from this study support that narrative and procedural discourse can be feasibly sampled via telehealth and that international collaboration for research on this topic can facilitate such studies. Individuals with TBI performed more poorly on three measures of narrative discourse. No differences between groups were identified for the procedural task. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: Telehealth assessment for discourse provides flexibility for both the individual with TBI and the speech–language therapist and does not compromise the quality of data collected. The administration of discourse tasks and collection of data was not time‐consuming and was well accepted by the study participants. Additionally, international research collaboration not only expands potential participation in research but increases the opportunity to recruit and study more diverse groups. [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]

Specialist, associate specialist and specialty (SAS) doctors constitute a marginalised professional group who can struggle to achieve the professional development they desire. Our primary objective was to understand, from a theoretically informed perspective, the ways in which the professional identity of SAS doctors influences their professional development opportunities, including through appraisal. Ten UK SAS doctors participated in indepth, narrative interviews. Participants were drawn from six medical specialities, and ranged in experience (2.5--15 years) and country of primary medical qualification. Interview transcripts were analysed via critical discourse analysis using Figured Worlds theory. The position of SAS doctors within the Figured World was at times unstable, ambiguous and context dependent. They were often relative outsiders, not immediately trusted by colleagues. Some found their development needs eclipsed by the priorities of colleagues, typically consultants and postgraduate trainees. Appraisal was often not perceived to have successfully addressed these issues. This study enhances our understanding of the lived experience of SAS doctors, which is often in stark contrast to formal policy on the range of roles that they can fulfil. The struggles and successes of SAS doctors described here suggest that there is scope to improve the professional status and professional development opportunities for SAS doctors, including through appraisal. [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]

This article analyses the emergence of the discourse of period poverty in UK news media across a two-year period. Using thematic analysis and discourse analysis, I analyse three themes: the focus on the schoolgirl, the silencing of the austerity context and the preoccupation with products and public figures to solve the structural issue of period poverty. In doing so, I argue that period poverty has emerged in the cultural sphere due to three key, and intertwined, forces: the continued dismantling of the welfare state and individualising of poverty, an escalation of mainstream feminism and feminist activism around menstruation, as well as high-profile individuals (celebrities, MPs, royals etc) supporting period poverty as philanthropy. This article brings together literature on austerity media culture and mediations of mainstream feminism/s. It expands scholarship on austerity media culture by analysing how the novel discourse of period poverty continues to individualise poverty and justify the ongoing dismantling of the welfare state, and it furthers scholarship on mainstream feminism/s by examining how the discourse of period poverty connects mainstream feminism/s with austerity and class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, an increasing 'emotionality' in Britain's political discourse has been attested by many researchers and public commentators alike, regularly accusing alleged modern-day 'populists' of having caused this emotionalization with their unusual conduct and rhetoric. In these analyses, however, emotional speech is too often conflated with 'populist' speech, without offering substantial historical proof to support such claims. To scrutinize this alleged novel emotionalization of the general political discourse in Britain and to historically contextualize the influence that alleged 'populists' have had on it, I conducted a comparative, sequential mixed methods study of political speeches from British Labour and Conservative Party leaders (quant → QUAL), performing a manual neopragmatist discourse analysis as well as an automated dictionary analysis. With this approach, I was able to determine the distinct argumentative characteristics of the speeches and explore the discourses' emotional quality, reporting a multitude of qualitative and quantitative differences as well as similarities between the two parties. Thus, the paper offers a (historical) overview of the general employment of emotion within political speech and consequently, argumentation used by British politicians. These findings are then used to contextualize claims about the influence that alleged 'populists' have had on the emotionality of recent politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than six and half million people have died as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic till Dec 2022. Vaccination is the most effective means to prevent mortality and infection attributed to COVID-19. Identifying public attitudes and perceptions on COVID-19 vaccination is essential to strengthening the vaccination programmes. This study aims to identify attitudes and perceptions of twitter users towards COVID-19 vaccinations in four different countries. A sentiment analysis of 663,377 tweets from October 2020 to September 2022 from four different countries (i.e., India, South Africa, UK, and Australia) was conducted. Text mining using roBERTA (Robustly Optimized Bert Pretraining approach) python library was used to identify the polarity of people's attitude as "negative", "positive" or "neutral" based on tweets. A sample of 2000 tweets (500 from each country) were thematically analysed to explore the people's perception concerning COVID-19 vaccines across the countries. The attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines varied by countries. Negative attitudes were observed to be highest in India (58.48%), followed by United Kingdom (33.22%), Australia (31.42%) and South Africa (28.88%). Positive attitudes towards vaccines were highest in the United Kingdom (21.09%). The qualitative analysis yielded eight themes namely (i) vaccine shortages, (ii) vaccine side-effects, (iii) distrust on COVID-19 vaccines, (iv) voices for vaccine equity, (v) awareness about vaccines, (vi) myth busters, (vii) vaccines work and (viii) vaccines are safe. The twitter discourse reflected the evolving situation of COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination strategies, lacunae and positives in the respective countries studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notions of home are deeply rooted in how we understand our interrelational selves and where we fit in to the world around us. This qualitative research explored how young people, their families and staff on a United Kingdom (UK) psychiatric adolescent inpatient unit constructed meaning around the notion of home within the unit. Admissions on such units can range from a few days to many months, and understanding what young people, families and staff consider the unit to be – home, hospital, or something else – has significant clinical implications for both treatment and recovery. Eleven focus groups with staff, young people and families on a general adolescent inpatient unit were conducted and the data scrutinised using a discourse analysis. This research suggests that discourses around role confusion, safety and the embodiment of home, attachment relationships and the contradictory positions of home or hospital were evident for all participants. Theories such as the reciprocal nature of attachment relationships between staff and young people, iatrogenic injury and attachment ruptures between young people and parents all have a profound impact on an inpatient admission and are often unspoken and under‐operationalised. Clinical recommendations are made about the need for a paradigm shift in how admissions are understood for young people, how to manage the dilemmas associated with the unit becoming a home and what the subsequent training needs of inpatient staff are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we explore motherhood as an interactionally emergent identity category that speakers construct and lay claim to in talk, and as a category that is imbued with moral expectations of how incumbents should behave. We analyse 18 child-focussed debates from British daytime television talk show, This Morning. Engaging a postfeminist framework, we use membership categorisation analysis to explore how, and to what effect, women deploy claims to motherhood. We report three main findings: (a) Speakers routinely quantify their motherhood credentials in the development of a "mother-cum-expert" identity; (b) speakers who construct motherhood in accordance with neoliberal norms of "good motherhood" habitually trump the arguments offered by other speakers, including those with professional expertise; (c) any challenge to essentialist norms of womanhood and/or motherhood become accountable matters. We conclude that whilst there is power in motherhood insomuch as it vests some women with expertise and elevates their rights to be heard on child-focussed matters, the speakers in our study nevertheless construct motherhood in a manner that (re)produces and elevates essentialised notions of gender and narrow versions of motherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy promotes the active participation of those with lived experience of mental health difficulties in UK NHS mental health services, from the level of collaborative care-planning to service delivery, leadership and development. However, research indicates different forms of resistance to the implementation of such service user involvement. This article reports the findings of a qualitative, interview-based study which used Foucauldian discourse analysis and psychoanalytic theory to understand how resistances are produced through the interplay of clinical mental health professionals' subjectivity and their organisational context. Service user involvement was found to highlight conflicts within clinicians' roles. Central to this conflict was an ambivalent relationship to the power associated with these roles. Power could protect professionals from work related stresses, but could also be used to dominate, silence and coerce service users in ways that conflicted with the core function of providing care. Whilst important, raising awareness of such conflict will arouse discomfort and resistance where psychological defences are challenged. A parallel is drawn with psychotherapeutic change, in which resistance must be understood and worked with as part of meaningful change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on analysis of media representations and interviews with 25 single women, this article argues that the single woman is abjectified in US–UK popular culture through processes of instability and incoherence, which construct her as a threat to heteronormative femininity and recentres the coupled norm. Yet there are moments of contestation within media portrayals, where her 'illegibility' allows for a troubling of the gender binary and opens up spaces for working with and against such oppressive structures. Drawing on Butler's heterosexual matrix, I show that singledom is produced here as a non-normative heterosexual practice, which radically destabilises femininity and heteronormativity. This article examines not only how single femininity is being culturally delegitimised, but also how single women in the United Kingdom experience such delegitimisation. Through complex processes of what José Esteban Muñoz calls '(dis)identification', the women work with, alongside and against representations of normative coupled femininity. They also tactically work with portrayals of the single woman to self-reflexively construct alternative single feminine subjectivities. Yet more troublingly, even in moments of resistance, the single women make painful identifications with their abject positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses discursive approaches to examine the utility and functions of language in public health, focusing on social constructions of e-cigarettes. Due to the ambiguity surrounding the use of e-cigarettes, understanding may be negotiated collaboratively through co-construction in talk. Ten participants, three men and seven women aged 26–47 years, took part in two focus groups in Manchester, UK, where they discussed e-cigarettes. Data were analysed using blended discourse analysis, with a view to identifying dominant repertoires used by speakers. Participants drew from two discursive frameworks to communicate perceptions of e-cigarettes: (1) uncertainty and risk and (2) the social acceptability and stigma spectrum. The ambiguity surrounding e-cigarettes was reflected in the linguistic devices used in talk. This article demonstrates the value of drawing on discourse analysis to better understand the impact of health-related communication by providing insight into how existing messages are interpreted, co-constructed, and assigned meaning through shared interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than six and half million people have died as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic till Dec 2022. Vaccination is the most effective means to prevent mortality and infection attributed to COVID-19. Identifying public attitudes and perceptions on COVID-19 vaccination is essential to strengthening the vaccination programmes. This study aims to identify attitudes and perceptions of twitter users towards COVID-19 vaccinations in four different countries. A sentiment analysis of 663,377 tweets from October 2020 to September 2022 from four different countries (i.e., India, South Africa, UK, and Australia) was conducted. Text mining using roBERTA (Robustly Optimized Bert Pretraining approach) python library was used to identify the polarity of people's attitude as "negative", "positive" or "neutral" based on tweets. A sample of 2000 tweets (500 from each country) were thematically analysed to explore the people's perception concerning COVID-19 vaccines across the countries. The attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines varied by countries. Negative attitudes were observed to be highest in India (58.48%), followed by United Kingdom (33.22%), Australia (31.42%) and South Africa (28.88%). Positive attitudes towards vaccines were highest in the United Kingdom (21.09%). The qualitative analysis yielded eight themes namely (i) vaccine shortages, (ii) vaccine side-effects, (iii) distrust on COVID-19 vaccines, (iv) voices for vaccine equity, (v) awareness about vaccines, (vi) myth busters, (vii) vaccines work and (viii) vaccines are safe. The twitter discourse reflected the evolving situation of COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination strategies, lacunae and positives in the respective countries studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability benefits function by demarcating categories of need (the administrative category of disability) and determine eligibility using assessments of functioning. In the UK, these assessments are the Work Capability Assessment and PIP assessment. Inherently technical and abstruse processes, these assessments have been opportune sites for welfare reform in recent years. Disability benefits have also been a central point of contention between disability studies and sociology. Sociology has traditionally favoured an 'incomes approach' and called for more adequate financial support from the state. Early figures in the disabled people's movement rejected this position, and aligned with an oppression paradigm, argued for a more radical economic and social inclusion. We contend that this divide, set out in the Fundamental Principles of Disability, remains relevant for researching welfare reform today. This article treats benefits assessments as epistemic practices—interactional processes wherein claimants, their personal health professionals and commercial assessment providers come together in the production of knowledge about disability. Data include 50 in‐depth interviews with benefit claimants and a discourse analysis of official texts directed at claimants, personal health professionals and commercial assessment providers. We outline a phenomenon we term 'epistemic sabotage', whereby the knowledge claims of claimants and their health professionals are systemically disqualified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a discourse analysis of emotions in national human research ethics guidelines from Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and United States, I argue that such guidelines treat emotions as superfluous, harmful, risky and threats to rational decision-making. Such uncritical appreciation of emotions sees instructions to show 'respect' position non-Western participants as 'the other', sees directives to consider 'emotional welfare' undermine the autonomy of people from ostensibly vulnerable groups, and risks undermining qualitative research's cathartic potential. These findings underpin a call to revise guidelines to position emotions as part of everyday life; and to encourage researchers to adopt embodied, caring and emotionally reflexive approaches to human research, where researchers draw on guidelines and emotions in deciding how to produce ethical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent UK study found that 28% of autistic children were diagnosed with autism after starting secondary school, a stage where self-concept and social identity are the main developmental tasks. This study uses Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to explore the discourses ten girls with a diagnosis of autism use in their constructions of self-concept and social identity in interviews and written journals. The actions that are made possible through the discourses employed are considered. Three discourses which participants draw upon are: a diagnostic discourse; an individualistic discourse; and a normativity discourse. These discourses were used to construct the self as a "legitimised autistic", as "a person with support needs", as "uniquely individual", as a person "in the process of becoming" and as a "self in hiding from a hostile world". Social identities based around constructs of "fitting in" and "sticking out" were identified. Implications for practice are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the troubling of gender norms that unfolded on the social networking site, Mumsnet, at the beginning of the UK's first lockdown response to the COVID pandemic. Using an analysis of 7144 contributions which included the acronym 'WFH' (=working from home), posted from March 1, 2020 to April 5, 2020, the article examines how Mumsnet members talked about working from home while caring for toddlers and home‐schooled children. Mumsnet discussions about everyday moral dilemmas create a discursive space for examining the situated rationalities and normative judgments that shape expectations of how to behave as a working parent. Drawing on post‐structuralist discourse theory, the article shows how Mumsnet contributors generated alternative sub‐categorizations of 'good mums', and destabilized discourse assumptions of intensive motherhood, such as always 'being there' for their children, thereby 'working the weakness in the norms' (Butler, 1993) and creating potential for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Press representations of autism and autistic people both reflect and help shape public attitudes towards autism and neurodiversity and may establish critical barriers to social integration for autistic individuals. This study examined such representations in UK newspapers in the period 2011–2020 using a corpus-based approach. It also considered how press representations changed over time and differed with regard to reporting style (tabloids vs broadsheets) and political orientation (left- vs right-leaning). We created the Autism UK Press Corpus, which included all documents (~24K) referring to autism in 10 national newspapers. We used document counts (normalised by newspaper size) to assess the 'newsworthiness' of autism. We also employed a synergy of corpus-based and critical-discourse-analysis methodologies to study lexicogrammatical patterns and uncover explicit and implicit attitudes towards autism. Our results showed that the coverage of autism increased slightly over time, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. Newspapers emphasised adversities associated with autism, often used negative language, and tended to focus on boys. These representations shifted gradually towards more difference-based descriptions and included more diverse age/gender groups, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. We discuss the broad implications of these findings for the autism community and those interested in a more inclusive society. Any thriving society must recognise, accept and celebrate all of its diverse talent. But how accepting is British society towards autism and autistic people? This research addressed this question through the lens of the press since the press both reflects and helps shape public attitudes towards various social categories. We used specialised 'corpus-based' methods to carry out a large-scale study, which examined all articles referring to autism or autistic people in 10 national British newspapers in the period 2011–2020. We first investigated how often newspapers referred to autism. We found that the coverage of autism increased slightly over the years, suggesting that autism was becoming an increasingly newsworthy topic. Furthermore, the rise in autism coverage differed considerably between individual newspapers: it was more pronounced in the broadsheets than tabloids, and in left-leaning than right-leaning newspapers. But what was the focus of these articles? We found that newspapers emphasised the adversities associated with autism and portrayed autism with a lot of negative language. Newspapers also tended to focus on autistic children, and particularly on boys. There were some signs of change in more recent years, with some newspapers now representing autism as a difference and, in addition, referring to more diverse groups of autistic people. However, these changes tended to be confined to broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. Our findings suggest that representations of autism in the contemporary British press are skewed towards stereotypically negative views, which may well hinder the acceptance of autism and the fostering of a more inclusive society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is often characterised as a 'crisis', requiring action by public, private, and third-sector stakeholders to achieve strategic change. Crisis narratives are powerful and may be co-opted to privilege solutions promoted by influential groups. In relation to AMR, this applies particularly to the pharmaceutical and medical diagnostics industries. Given the associated risk of inefficient use of public funds, critical attention must be paid to how the promoted 'solutions' to the AMR crisis are constructed, and their symbolic and material effects on health policy. We conducted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the seventy-one written submissions to the UK House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee's 2018 inquiry into AMR. Two researchers collaboratively coded the findings and categorised the submissions. We applied the Policy Dystopia Model to further analyse the proposed solutions and ascertain the discursive and instrumental arguments in the industry submissions to the Committee. We found that industry submissions deployed economic and governance discursive strategies, articulating three main 'market paradoxical' arguments: (i) interference but non-interference; (ii) power but powerlessness; and (iii) for-profit but not-for-profit. The industry submissions also drew upon instrumental strategies including: coalition management, information management, and direct involvement and influence in policymaking. Our analysis suggests that commercial interests deploy crisis narratives to advocate for solutions involving market deregulation and industry subsidies. Thus, the solutions presented to the Committee were heavily shaped by a technocratic-industrial complex. This contributes to influencing what is seen as possible and acceptable in the global AMR policy landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the rationing of medical care for older people by frailty score was justified and operationalised in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 was expected to overwhelm the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. In March 2020, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published the 'COVID-19 rapid guideline: critical care in adults', which advised that clinicians use the Clinical Frailty Score (CFS) to inform decisions about which patients over the age of 65 should be offered ventilatory support. We present a Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis of this guidance and the supporting online resources. Analysis shows how the guidance merchandises the CFS as a quick and easy-to-use technology that reduces social and physical complexity into a clinical score. This stratifies older people by frailty score and permits the allocation of resources along these lines. We show how this is justified through epidemiological discourses of risk, which are merged with the language of individual mortality prediction. We discuss the proceduralisation of the CFS alongside a growing body of research that problematises its application in resource allocation. We argue that the pandemic has increased the use of the concept of frailty and that this effectively obfuscates the concept's limitations and ambiguities; the ageism implicit in the response to COVID-19 in the UK; and the relative resource scarcity facing the UK's NHS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how reading focus group data 'against the grain' offers new insights into publics', and especially marginalised groups', negotiation of dominant discourses. Using data from a study with members of the UN Foundation's Girl Up campaign in the UK, US and Malawi, I demonstrate that reading against the grain both across and within groups enabled me to explore the girls' complex negotiations of girl power discourses in international development. I argue that reading focus group data against the grain involves paying attention both to wider social power relations, as is crucial to a poststructuralist discourse analysis, and to interactions between group members, a form of analysis more commonly associated with Conversation Analysis. This methodological strategy enabled me to explore the topic of girl power discourses in international development from a new perspective, moving beyond the abundance of critiques in the literature of dominant discourses emerging from powerful institutions. By focusing on the girls' instances of resistance to, and critical engagement with, dominant discourses, I suggest that reading focus group data against the grain opens up the possibility of a rich new area of research for scholars and practitioners alike: one which goes beyond simplistic victim/agency binaries and explores the complexities of audiences' readings of texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a growth in single women in UK society over the past two decades, single femininity continues to be highly stigmatised. Drawing on Judith Butler's theory of the heterosexual matrix and applying this to qualitative interview data with 25 single women, I argue that single femininity is produced as abject through processes of silencing which render the single female a 'failed' subject and reinscribe heteronormative coupled femininity. Yet while deeply painful, such 'failures' may also be productive, offering moments where the boundaries of heteronormative feminine subjectivity and hierarchies of intimate life are troubled and transformed. This article complicates understandings of stigma and resistance through a nuanced analysis of processes of abjectification and ambivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how reading focus group data 'against the grain' offers new insights into publics', and especially marginalised groups', negotiation of dominant discourses. Using data from a study with members of the UN Foundation's Girl Up campaign in the UK, US and Malawi, I demonstrate that reading against the grain both across and within groups enabled me to explore the girls' complex negotiations of girl power discourses in international development. I argue that reading focus group data against the grain involves paying attention both to wider social power relations, as is crucial to a poststructuralist discourse analysis, and to interactions between group members, a form of analysis more commonly associated with Conversation Analysis. This methodological strategy enabled me to explore the topic of girl power discourses in international development from a new perspective, moving beyond the abundance of critiques in the literature of dominant discourses emerging from powerful institutions. By focusing on the girls' instances of resistance to, and critical engagement with, dominant discourses, I suggest that reading focus group data against the grain opens up the possibility of a rich new area of research for scholars and practitioners alike: one which goes beyond simplistic victim/agency binaries and explores the complexities of audiences' readings of texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors explore the relationship between language and interpersonal dynamics within supervision groups for psychoanalytically oriented child and adolescent psychotherapists working at a charitable clinical service in a large metropolitan city in the UK. Using discourse analysis, the authors identified key interpersonal functions of language in a professional supervisory setting. Results revealed linguistic processes through which power identities and dynamics were enacted and multiple opinions and perspectives negotiated during group supervision. The authors then make practical suggestions regarding the management of power differentials and interpersonal relationships to facilitate more constructive group supervision and promote better therapeutic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how metaphors about what the internet is inform policymaker and industry discourses, when they propose solutions on internet safety. More specifically, it analyzes documents by key players in this debate during a period when the UK government proposed direct regulation of online harms. The study finds that policy documents construct the internet primarily as a "place" that is separate from offline experience; and to a smaller extent as a "tool" that can be abused if it falls in the wrong hands. The article argues that these constructions obscure any links between online and offline risk, and that they legitimize solutions which may not take into account the social roots of online harms. It also suggests that the discourses of policymakers and SNS companies differ in the degree of agency they attribute to users, indicating a discrepancy in their approaches as direct regulation is introduced in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'inclusion health' agenda aims to draw attention to health disadvantages accompanying experiences putatively characterised by social exclusion, such as homelessness, problem substance use, or imprisonment. However, its increasing prominence has surfaced conceptual uncertainties and potential tensions with other understandings of health inequalities. We undertook a discourse analysis of how recent health inequalities policy documents describe, explain, and make recommendations relating to inclusion health. Using the UK as a case study, and with reference to public health accounts of multi-level governance theory, we selected five recent health inequalities policy reviews covering Scotland, UK, European Union, and the World Health Organisation. All documents referred to some inclusion health concerns, though their relative emphasis differed between documents. Terms like inclusion, exclusion, and vulnerability were commonly used, but ill-defined and often ambiguous. Explanatory discourses were diverse, with a particular focus on intergenerational cycles and disproportionate exposure to risk, with a varying emphasis on individual versus structural factors. Few documents provided coherent explanatory accounts for the relationship between the issues of interest to inclusion health, their associations with poor health, and other axes of inequality. Our results suggest that health inequalities policymaking in a multi-level context may benefit from comprehensive conceptual frameworks which encompass diverse forms of social stratification, advantage, and disadvantage, and acknowledge potential tensions and trade-offs between different understandings. This may necessitate further theoretical and empirical work for inclusion health on its definitions, bounds, and how its scope of interest interacts with other forms of social and health inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the utility of metaphor as an investigative tool in "long-distance" corpora and discourse studies. I show that metaphor is both important for understanding discourses and useful for diachronic analysis because it allows us to abstract out above the purely lexical level, enabling comparison across contexts where the same concept could be lexicalised differently. The case-study is concerned with the oft-discussed metaphor of migrants are water in the UK-based Times newspaper from 1800–2018 and the conventionalisation and evaluative patterns are presented. The findings confirm that the water metaphor has an extensive discourse history regarding how migration is represented in the UK press, but also that evaluations may differ significantly. The paper shows how metaphor can provide a way to find discourse evaluations and framings across different time periods. The use of second-order collocates illustrates how corpus tools can help re-contextualise data to ensure interpretation heeds contemporary framings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Self‐management strategies improve asthma outcomes, although interventions for South Asian populations have been less effective than in White populations. Both self‐management and culture are dynamic, and factors such as acculturation and generation have not always been adequately reflected in existing cultural interventions. We aimed to explore the perspectives of Bangladeshi and Pakistani people in the United Kingdom, across multiple generations (first, second and third/fourth), on how they self‐manage their asthma, with a view to suggesting recommendations for cultural interventions. Methods: We purposively recruited Bangladeshi and Pakistani participants, with an active diagnosis of asthma from healthcare settings. Semi‐structured interviews in the participants' choice of language (English, Sylheti, Standard Bengali or Urdu) were conducted, and data were analysed thematically. Results: Twenty‐seven participants (13 Bangladeshi and 14 Pakistani) were interviewed. There were generational differences in self‐management, influenced by complex cultural processes experienced by South Asians as part of being an ethnic minority group. Individuals from the first generation used self‐management strategies congruent to traditional beliefs such as 'sweating' and often chose to travel to South Asian countries. Generations born and raised in the United Kingdom learnt and experimented with self‐management based on their fused identities and modified their approach depending on whether they were in familial or peer settings. Acculturative stress, which was typically higher in first generations who had migration‐related stressors, influenced the priority given to asthma self‐management throughout generations. The amount and type of available asthma information as well as social discussions within the community and with healthcare professionals also shaped asthma self‐management. Conclusions: Recognizing cultural diversity and its influence of asthma self‐management can help develop effective interventions tailored to the lives of South Asian people. Patient or Public Contribution: Patient and Public Involvement colleagues were consulted throughout to ensure that the study and its materials were fit for purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Involving participants/intended audiences in discourse analysis may help to avoid overemphasising the structural effects of discourse and silencing participant voice. Yet, involving participants in complex analytic processes effectively can prove difficult. In this study, the authors undertook a Foucauldian discourse analysis of sexual consent material within eight (predominantly UK) wide-ranging, youth-focused campaigns to identify the discourses relevant to sexual consent and produce a collage for each discourse. Then, 43 young people from West Yorkshire, UK, helped to identify the underlying messages in the collages (i.e. the discourses), and consider who was constructed as powerful, and who benefited and 'lost out' from these messages. This paper explores the benefits and challenges of involving young people in a discourse analysis in this way, and concludes that, a 'both/and' approach should be employed to acknowledge both young people's perspectives and the academic researcher's desire to retain a critical stance toward problematic discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definitions of drinker 'categories' (e.g., 'light drinkers') typically ignore the role of self-identification involved in drinking practices. To explore this, we presented self-identified 'non' or 'light' drinkers with official formal definitions of 'light' and 'binge' drinking as found in public health and academic research. A qualitative design was adopted. Semi-structured interviews with ten 18–27-year-old UK University students self-identifying as non-/light-drinkers were analysed using critical discourse analysis. A first data pattern saw participants working to defend and maintain self-identified 'light drinker' status in the face of contradictions to such claims. A second pattern involved participant challenges to the rigidity and legitimacy of formal drinking categories. A third pattern reflected participants' rhetorical work to hold at bay or reject disavowed and stigmatised drinking categories (e.g., 'alcoholic'). Interviews suggested how formal definitions could create ideological dilemmas for participants, partly through investment in how formally defined drinker categories connected with recent personal drinking practices. Our data helps explain why units-based drinking guidelines may be poorly understood. More nuanced use of 'drinker categories' in units-based drinking guidelines could strengthen the visibility and credibility of alcohol health messages or could be drawn on in digital interventions designed to encourage moderate consumption behaviour by delivering personalised feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an analysis of narratives that emerged from a recent interdisciplinary design thinking careers intervention exploring how employability is represented within one UK University. We conducted a critical discourse analysis using a policy analysis framework that revealed four emergent problem representations. These exposed tacit assumptions about students' lack of employability skills and the responsibilisation of 'employability', amplified silences around opportunity structures and highlighted unquestioned expectations about employability in the neoliberalist paradigm. The need for critical discourse is foregrounded, as is the importance of collective engagement in reframing these narratives. Design Thinking shows promise as a novel intervention for future career education practice, enabling practitioners and individuals to begin to co-create a new critical consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisations funded by Sport England or UK Sport must work towards achieving standards for safeguarding and protecting children in sport as set by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children's Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU) and encourage a culture of listening to children. The present research was commissioned by the NSPCC CPSU to understand the practices of UK sports clubs regarding this objective. An electronic questionnaire was distributed through the national governing bodies of sport working with the CPSU. Some 64 clubs/squads representing 6,000+ juniors (under 18 years) responded. Quantitative data were analysed using simple statistics and qualitative data were themed utilising Foucault's theory of power and following Braun and Clark's six‐phase guide. Discourse, hierarchical judgement and docility were considered with reference to formal management and cultural environments. Semantic and latent themes were explored. The themes identified were: expectation awareness, reframing voice and preserving discourse. Clubs recognise the value of listening to children. However, existing power relations valorise adult knowledge fields over the experiences of juniors. Technology could provide an effective solution as it is remote, potentially anonymous and culturally accessible. As power is a productive force, problematisation of organisational culture could centralise children's voices and limit/prevent abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the theoretical discussion of the historical legitimacy of single mothers by examining the construction of relationships between single motherhood and welfare policy. Specifically, the study analyses the changing discourse regarding single mothers, and the social policy designed for them, in the US, UK and Israel from the 1970s to the 2000s. These three countries are similar in terms of the embeddedness, extension and institutionalization of neoliberal ideology in their welfare policies and public discourse, together with welfare legislation affecting single mothers, yet they differ in terms of policy implementation and the history of policy development. The study examines institutional intersectionality along with cultural perceptions of single mothers in each country. Looking at both the development and the withdrawal of social rights over time, we deepen understanding of how the image of the single mother is created in the neoliberal welfare regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating and disseminating knowledge through research and teaching has long been regarded as the hallmark of the modern university. However, new university business models have called into question the 'bundling' of teaching and research, and sustained research on the relationship between teaching and research has found little evidence of an insoluble connection between the two activities. In this article, we explore the relationship between teaching and research from the perspective of universities' institutional discourse. We use corpus‐assisted discourse analysis to examine the relationship between research and teaching as presented in two sets of institutional texts currently influential in UK Higher Education: Research Excellence Framework environment statements and Teaching Excellence Framework provider submissions (a total of 2143 documents and 12,492,071 words). Our findings show that, while universities emphasise the value of research to their teaching, they do not always emphasise (or sometimes even decry) the influence of teaching on their research. We empirically evidence that, according to what universities themselves write in institutional texts, teaching and research are not always in a mutually beneficial entanglement, but often rather a one‐way relationship in which research expertise and institutional prestige are used to bolster claims of teaching excellence. This has implications for the communication of both the vision and the purpose of a university in regulatory exercises and wider policy, but also speaks to the broader idea and practice of being a university in the twenty‐first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on recent developments in UK health research policy, which place new pressures on researchers to address issues of accountability and impact through the implementation of patient and public involvement (PPI). We draw on an in-depth interview study with 20 professional researchers, and we analyse their experiences of competing for research funding, focusing on PPI as a process of professional research governance. We unearth dominant professional narratives of scepticism and alternative identifications in their enactment of PPI policy. We argue that such narratives and identifications evidence a resistance to ways in which patient involvement has been institutionalised and to the resulting subject-positions researchers are summoned to take up. We show that the new subjectivities emerging in this landscape of research governance as increasingly disempowered, contradictory and fraught with unresolved tensions over the ethical dimensions of the researchers' own professional identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With animals as the primary and intermediary vectors of COVID-19, we sought to understand the ways in which animals were represented in UK news media during the emergence of the global pandemic and how these portrayals impact the lives of humans and animals. Using the Lexis-Nexis online media archive, we searched for news media reports featuring animals during the emergence of COVID-19 in the UK from the period January–October 2020. We analyzed a total of 452 news articles from three UK newspapers: Daily Mail, The Sun (both tabloids), and The Guardian (a broadsheet). Newspaper articles were thematically coded and qualitatively analyzed for emergent themes. Using a trans-species lens, whereby we view the shared commonalities between species as a challenge to anthropocentric hierarchies of human dominance, we explore three main themes: "It's their fault," "It's not their fault," and "It's our fault." Each theme illustrates how animals are represented by news media in the attribution of blame and victimhood of those impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Our results show that animals are utilized by today's polarized media as tools to promote the political and social ideals of the press and their respective readership. The tabloids used animals for the promotion of bigotry, xenophobia, and racism. In comparison, The Guardian held a pro-environmental stance by framing the zoonotic disease as a platform to challenge the human–animal dichotomy and advocate for environmental, human, and animal equality. Domestic companion animals received the greatest positive media coverage across the newspapers, particularly in relation to the value of the human–animal bond for human health during the lockdown. In comparison, across the broadsheet and tabloid press, animals in research received limited coverage. Research animals were neither recognized for their contribution to human health nor as vulnerable others impacted by COVID-19. The specific impacts of these themes upon animals are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of a global demographic shift, an aging population and a 'crisis' in adult social care (ASC), this study analyses over 3000 pledges on ASC in political parties' manifesto discourse following the United Kingdom's move to a multi-level electoral politics in 1998/1999. Although often overlooked, attention to this formative phase of social policy-making reveals the discursive political antecedents of welfare interventions. The analysis shows a major increase in issue-salience and party politicisation of ASC policy. The discourse reveals political cleavages on welfare mixes and policy framing, and sub-state resistance to central government policies. Against the backdrop of the international rise of devolved governance, the present case is of wider international significance because it illustrates how the transition from state-wide to (quasi-)federal electoral practices gives rise to new territorial dynamics in the electoral discourse of welfare provision; in turn, promoting territorialisation, pressure for welfare state expansion and the rise of 'sub-state' welfare regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'securitisation' of migration is argued to rest on a process of framing migrants as a threat to key values, principally identity. Yet, the socially constructed nature of 'identity' implies the potential for dual usage: support and contestation of the security frame. Using the UK as an illustrative case, this overlooked dynamic is explored through mixed-methods, incorporating elite political and religious discourse (2005–2015) and original public attitudinal survey evidence. The discourse analysis reveals that the preservation of an imperilled British identity ('tolerance') is a frame invoked, in different ways and by different actors, to either support or contest the securitisation of migration. Similarly, British citizens who deeply value the preservation of 'Britishness' have diverse, positive and negative views on migration, challenging the notion that identity as a referent object is deterministically linked to anti-immigration attitudes. The innovative concept of 'counter-securitisation' is utilised and developed, unpicking these nuances and their implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The caring mother is one of the most recurring images of femininity in post-war advertising. We examine how mothers are depicted as knowing consumers in advertisements in Australian Women's Weekly and the United Kingdom's Good Housekeeping magazines between 1950 and 2010. Our data suggest that although visual representations of maternal consumer knowledge change over this period, assumptions about the responsibilities of mothers endure in the family-related advertisements in these women's magazines. There is a shift over time, however, from a representation of mothers as passive recipients of advice provided by external experts to a more active representation of mothers as experts themselves within both domestic and private spheres. We trace historically how the trope of the knowing mother works as a visual discursive device that helps to reinforce not just patriarchal hegemony, but a particular form of maternal hegemony. The hegemony of motherhood presents a particularly desirable/idealised femininity. However, this visual depiction also serves to gender the very way in which maternal knowledge is to be used. While maternal knowledge is depicted as changing from being merely intuitive or practical to subsuming the technique of knowledge or prescribed expertise; the purposes for which such knowledge is used remain firmly situated within the maternal/feminine realm of nurturing and caring consumption for the family. Despite shifts in discourse that appear to increasingly value mothers' knowledge—there exists an enduring assumption that mothers should use their knowledge for domestic caring and consumption, ultimately reinforcing a heteronormativity of the use of women's knowledge that subdues even expert knowledge for a domestic purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries, official guidance promotes alcohol abstinence to women during, and also before, pregnancy, on the basis of concern about Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Guidance has moved away from reference to a 'choice to drink', claiming absence of evidence about safety of even 'low level' drinking as a justification. Scholarship drawing on sociologies of risk and uncertainty has drawn attention to problems with precautionary thinking in this area of policy making, including for women's autonomy. We build on these insights to assess a more recent type of UK guidance. This is directed not to women advising them to abstain, but instead it is about women, and tasks health professionals with managing the risk pregnant women's behaviour is deemed to present. Using qualitative discourse analysis, we assess one such example, developed in Scotland, called SIGN 156. We contextualise SIGN 156 first through discussion of the relevant literature, making particular use of Ruhl's considerations of the meaning of risk and the social conditioning of choice, and second through an account of developments in UK Government advice in recent years. We show that SIGN 156 builds on a policy context where a precautionary approach is explicit, but we furthermore detail how this approach innovates the guidance and practice field. SIGN 156 expands the meaning of risk and uncertainty and so justifies 'routine' monitoring and screening, generating the case for an expanded form of surveillance of pregnant women. We conclude with a critical commentary on the implications of this case for analyses of risk and uncertainty, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnicity and im/migrant classification systems and their constituent categories have a long history in the construction of public health knowledge on tuberculosis in the United Kingdom. This article critically examines the categories employed and the epidemiological discourses on TB, im/migrants, and ethnic minorities in health reporting between 1965 and 2015. We employ a Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse Analysis to trace the continuities and changes in the categories used and in the discursive construction of im/migrants, ethnic minorities, and TB. These continuities and disjunctures are analysed within their socio-historical context to demonstrate the historical contingency of epidemiological knowledge production. We outline two historical phases in knowledge construction. The first coincides with the period of decolonisation, which witnessed a change in discursive identity ascriptions from 'immigrants' to 'ethnic groups' in health reporting as the 'other'. The second commenced after 1991, when the adoption of the census ethnicity categories as a standard in the collection of population statistics entrenched ethnicity categories in health reporting. We argue the health reporting discourse reveals that the 'new' public health exhibits continuities with the 'old' by targeting the immigrant 'other' through biosecuritisation practices. We contend that these categories originated within a postcolonial paradigm and that increasing immigration and new forms of mobility are creating the preconditions for new discourses on identity construction that have implications for the current collaborative TB strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Complexity' is theorised as a characteristic of modern food systems that poses a challenge to improving population diets. This paper seeks to explore the discursive deployment of 'complexity' in the context of public health. Doing so helps inform a more critical assessment of commercial and political determinants of health, and of 'complexity' as a prevailing frame for public health issues. Qualitative methods were used to explore 'responsibility' for healthy eating in the food system in the United Kingdom. Discourse analysis was conducted on corporate and government documents, and interviews with industry and government stakeholders. The aim was to examine the implications of 'complexity' within discourses of dietary public health. 'Complexity' was used not only to characterise dietary public health problems but also as a rhetorical device in public health narratives. It performed two main discursive functions: firstly, to represent diet-health problems as so multi-layered and difficult that they are intractable. Secondly, and despite this acknowledged complexity, to deflect from food system actions for improving diet to 'simpler' and non-food interventions, by industry and government. These uses of 'complexity' serve to attribute primary responsibility to individuals for dietary choice and to obscure inaction by government and industry, who have most control over the determinants of those choices. In short, 'complexity' can be used discursively to generate a smokescreen masking policy inaction in addressing public health problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period before conception is increasingly claimed to be of critical importance for pregnancy and birth outcomes, prompting calls for public health advice and interventions to be targeted at women before rather than during pregnancy. Drawing on Foucault's concepts of governmentality and technologies of the self, this article explores the implications of preconception health messages for women of reproductive age. Following a critical discursive analysis of 57 UK newspaper articles, three dominant representations of preconception health were identified: preconception health as optimizing fertility, as determining infant health, and as point of intervention. I suggest that these representations reflect neoliberal health agendas, positioning women as in control of and responsible for their fertility, the health of their future children, future generations, and of the wider population, all through careful self-policing of their lifestyles. In this way, "good" preconception health is emphasized as an increasingly important form of health citizenship. Furthermore, the analysis highlights the gendered nature of these expectations, with a disproportionate focus on the potential impact of women's preconception health. Few challenges to these dominant messages were identified, and concerns are raised about the potential impacts on the autonomy and subjectivities of women of reproductive age, regardless of pregnancy intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]