The body as a site of struggle: Oppositional discourses of the disciplined female body

Pienaar, Kiran M; Bekker, Ian

Title: The body as a site of struggle: Oppositional discourses of the disciplined female body
Creator: Pienaar, Kiran M
Creator: Bekker, Ian
Subject: To be catalogued
Date Issued: 2007
Date: 2007
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469223
Identifier: vital:77221
Identifier: https://doi.org/10.2989/16073610709486480
Description: This article presents the results of a study on the discursive construction of one aspect of gender identity, namely the female physical ideal. It reports on an analysis of the discourses of the disciplined female body, as these are drawn upon in two conversations between a group of young, Western female university students. The conversations were elicited in August 2005 using a stimulus exercise designed to encourage discussion on issues relating to female body image, such as the notion of the ideal female body, dieting and plastic surgery. Using the tools of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 2001) the article analyses four related discourses, namely the pro-diet discourse, the discourse of the healthy body, the discourse of studied indifference and the discourse of the sexually attractive female body, in terms of how these discourses encode different, sometimes contradictory ideologies of the Western female body ideal. The article concludes that the discourse of the sexually attractive female body emerges as dominant in these conversational extracts and that, by colonising the other discourses, it legitimates its ethic of compulsory heterosexuality, which positions women as erotic objects of the male gaze.
Format: 17 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Southern African linguistics and applied language studies
Relation: Pienaar, K. and Bekker, I., 2007. The body as a site of struggle: Oppositional discourses of the disciplined female body. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 25(4), pp.539-555
Relation: Southern African linguistics and applied language studies volume 25 number 4 539 555 2007 1727-9461
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions Statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)

Hits: 10
Visitors: 12
Downloads: 1

Collections

Bekker, Ian (Mr)

Pienaar, Kiran Merle (Ms)

Gender Action Forum (GENACT)

RU Department of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

SDG 05. Gender Equality

		Thumbnail	File	Description	Size	Format
View Details Download			SOURCE1	The body as a site of struggle.pdf	673 KB	Adobe Acrobat PDF	View Details Download