Textual Construction of the Female Body A Critical Discourse Approach

by Jeffries, Lesley

• ISBN13: 9780333914519
• ISBN10: 0333914511
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This volume takes a critical discourse approach to the ways in which texts from women's magazines contribute to the social construction of particular kinds of female body - as ideal, beautiful, ugly, overweight or engineered. By looking at a wide range of texts and studying the language used to describe female forms, Lesley Jeffries provides an insight into the experience of the female reader of such texts, and the likely impact upon her own self-image.

Author Biography

LESLEY JEFFRIES is Principal Lecturer in English at Huddersfield University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Preface: Code and Body - an Intervention	p. x
Studying the Language of the Female Body: Some Context	p. 1
Theories and practices	p. 1
Feminism, theory and the body	p. 17
A woman's life - the data	p. 23
Genre, Text Type and Rhetorical Strategy	p. 26
Genre and text types	p. 29
Blurring of categories	p. 46
Rhetorical strategies	p. 48
Naming and Describing	p. 61
Naming and describing	p. 63
Constructing the reader	p. 66
Describing	p. 78
Equating, Contrasting, Enumerating and Exemplifying	p. 102
Textual construction of sense relations	p. 102
Equating	p. 106
Contrasting	p. 109
Enumerating and exemplifying	p. 120
Assuming and Implying	p. 129
Presupposition and implicature	p. 129
Constructing the reader	p. 132
Perfection and attraction	p. 139
The Body in Time and Space	p. 152
Constructing time and space in texts	p. 152
Real, hypothetical, contracted and circular time	p. 152
Body as outer/inner space: literal and metaphorical treatments	p. 158
Other metaphors of bodily space	p. 162
Processes and Opinions	p. 167
Introduction	p. 167
Transitivity analysis	p. 167
Modality	p. 182
Speech and thought	p. 188
Conclusion	p. 194
Critical discourse analysis: an evolution	p. 195
The female body in women's magazines	p. 196
Studying the female form: future directions	p. 197
Notes	p. 200
Bibliography	p. 202
Index	p. 206
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