1887
Volume 9, Issue 2
  • ISSN 2211-3770
  • E-ISSN: 2211-3789
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

This research reports on newspaper representations of PrEP, a HIV-prevention drug recently made available on a trial basis to at-risk individuals in England. Using corpus-assisted queer critical discourse analysis, we investigate the linguistic representations of the users of PrEP within three leading British newspapers from across the political spectrum between 2014–18. We find that users of PrEP are most frequently positioned as ‘men who have sex with men’ or ‘gay men’, a representation that we argue limits public awareness of HIV itself, and of available HIV prevention. Furthermore, while the most left-leaning newspaper in our corpus focuses on the human benefit of PrEP, the most right-leaning newspaper takes a moralistic stance which frames gay men as risk-taking and therefore less deserving of healthcare funding than other groups. We therefore argue that certain representations of PrEP’s beneficiaries are implicitly homophobic, and that most representations are unhelpfully restrictive.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/jls.20002.jon
2020-09-07
2024-10-08
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Baker, Paul
    2006Public Discourses of Gay Men. London: Routledge. 10.4324/9780203643532
    https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203643532 [Google Scholar]
  2. Baker, Paul, Gabrielatos, Costas, KhosraviNik, Majid, Krzyzanowski, Michał, McEnery, Tony & Wodak, Ruth
    2008 A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society19(3): 273–306. 10.1177/0957926508088962
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926508088962 [Google Scholar]
  3. Barrón-Cedeño, Alberto & Rosso, Paulo
    2009 On automatic plagiarism detection based on N-grams comparison. InProceedings of the 31th European Conference on IR Research on Advances in Information Retrieval, Mohand Boughanem, Catherine Berrut, Josiane Mothe, Chantal Soulé-Dupuy (eds), 696–700. Berlin: Springer. 10.1007/978‑3‑642‑00958‑7_69
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00958-7_69 [Google Scholar]
  4. Borland, Sophie & Spencer, Ben
    2016 What a Skewed Sense of Values. Daily Mail. 3August 2016: 1.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Brezina, Vaclav, Timperley, Matt & McEnery, Tony
    2018 #LancsBox v.4 [software]. Available at: corpora.lancs.ac.uk/lancsbox
  6. Cheng, Winnie, Greaves, Chris & Warren, Martin
    2006 From n-gram to skipgram to concgram. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics11(4): 411–433. 10.1075/ijcl.11.4.04che
    https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.11.4.04che [Google Scholar]
  7. Department of Health and Social Care
    Department of Health and Social Care 2020 HIV drug PrEP to be available across England. Gov.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hiv-drug-prep-to-be-available-across-england (accessed19 March 2020)
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Duggan, Lisa
    2002 The new homonormativity: The sexual politics of neoliberalism. InMaterializing Democracy, Russ Castronovo & Dana D. Nelson (eds), 175–193. Durham: Duke University Press. 10.1215/9780822383901‑007
    https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822383901-007 [Google Scholar]
  9. Fairclough, Norman, Mulderrig, Jane & Wodak, Ruth
    2011 Critical discourse analysis. InDiscourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Teun A. van Dijk (ed), 357–378. London: Sage. 10.4135/9781446289068.n17
    https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446289068.n17 [Google Scholar]
  10. Hall, Kira
    2013 “It’s a hijra!” Queer linguistics revisited. Discourse and Society24(5): 634–642. 10.1177/0957926513490321
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926513490321 [Google Scholar]
  11. Jaspal, Rusi & Nerlich, Brigitte
    2017 Polarised press reporting about HIV prevention: Social representations of pre-exposure prophylaxis in the UK press. Health21(5): 478–497. 10.1177/1363459316649763
    https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459316649763 [Google Scholar]
  12. Jones, Lucy & Mills, Sara
    2014 Analysing agency: Reader responses to ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. Gender and Language8(2): 225–244. 10.1558/genl.v8i2.225
    https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v8i2.225 [Google Scholar]
  13. Jørgensen, Marianne & Phillips, Louise
    2002Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage. 10.4135/9781849208871
    https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849208871 [Google Scholar]
  14. Lazar, Michelle
    2005Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 10.1057/9780230599901
    https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599901 [Google Scholar]
  15. Leap, William
    2015 ‘Queer linguistics as critical discourse analysis’. InThe Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton & Deborah Schiffrin (eds), 661–680. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Lovelock, Michael
    2018 Sex, death and austerity: Resurgent homophobia in the British tabloid press. Critical Studies in Media Communication35(3): 225–239. 10.1080/15295036.2018.1442013
    https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2018.1442013 [Google Scholar]
  17. McCormack, Sheena,
    2016 Pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent the acquisition of HIV-1 infection (PROUD): Effectiveness results from the pilot phase of a pragmatic open-label randomised trial. Lancet387: 53–60. 10.1016/S0140‑6736(15)00056‑2
    https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00056-2 [Google Scholar]
  18. McLaughlin, Margaret L., Ho, Jinghui, Meng, Jingbo, Hu, Chih-Wei, An, Zheng, Park, Mina & Nam, Yujung
    2016 Propagation of information about pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention through Twitter. Health Communication31(8): 998–1007. 10.1080/10410236.2015.1027033
    https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2015.1027033 [Google Scholar]
  19. Motschenbacher, Heiko
    2011 Taking Queer Linguistics further: Sociolinguistics and critical heteronormativity research. International Journal of the Sociology of Language212: 149–179.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. 2018 Corpus linguistics in language and sexuality studies: Taking stock and looking ahead. Journal of Language and Sexuality7(2): 145–174. 10.1075/jls.17019.mot
    https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.17019.mot [Google Scholar]
  21. 2019 Discursive shifts associated with coming out: A corpus-based analysis of news reports about Ricky Martin. Journal of Sociolinguistics23(3): 284–302. 10.1111/josl.12343
    https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12343 [Google Scholar]
  22. Mowlabocus, Sharif
    2019 ‘What a skewed sense of values’: Discussing PreP in the British press. Sexualities. Online first, available at: doi:  10.1177/1363460719872726
    https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460719872726 [Google Scholar]
  23. Peterson, David
    2010 The “basis for a just, free and stable society”: Institutional homophobia and governance at the Family Research Council. Gender and Language4(2): 257–286.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Public Health England
    Public Health England 2017Towards Elimination of HIV Transmission, AIDS and HIV-Related Deaths in the UK. Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trust. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/675809/Towards_elimination_of_HIV_transmission_AIDS_and_HIV_related_deaths_in_the_UK.pdf (accessed13 October 2019).
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Public Health England
    Public Health England 2018PrEP Impact Trial: A Pragmatic Health Technology Assessment of PrEP and Implementation. Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trust. https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/5aeecc_56b43426275d4259a40a618b9e13bab1.pdf (accessed15 May 2019).
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Reyniers, Thijs, Hoornenborg, Elske, Vuylsteke, Bea, Wouters, Kristien & Laga, Marie
    2017 Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for men who have sex with men in Europe: Review of evidence for a much needed prevention tool. Sexual Transmitted Infections93: 363–367. 10.1136/sextrans‑2016‑052699
    https://doi.org/10.1136/sextrans-2016-052699 [Google Scholar]
  27. Smith, Matthew
    2017 How left- or right-wing are the UK’s newspapers? YouGov. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/03/07/how-left-or-right-wing-are-uks-newspapers (accessed12 November 2019).
  28. Thurlow, Crispin
    2016 Queering critical discourse studies or/and Performing ‘post-class’ ideologies. Critical Discourse Studies13(5): 485–514. 10.1080/17405904.2015.1122646
    https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2015.1122646 [Google Scholar]
  29. van der Bom, Isabelle, Coffey-Glover, Laura, Jones, Lucy, Mills, Sara & Paterson, Laura L.
    2015 Implicit homophobic argument structure: equal marriage discourse in The Moral Maze. Journal of Language and Sexuality4(1): 102–137. 10.1075/jls.4.1.04mil
    https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.4.1.04mil [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/jls.20002.jon
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/jls.20002.jon
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): corpus linguistics; HIV; homophobia; PrEP; queer critical discourse analysis
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error