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Representations of the subject ‘woman’ and the politics of abortion : an analysis of South African newspaper articles from 1978 to 2005
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona , Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6217 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006273 , http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2012.685760
- Description: A key element in cultural and gender power relations surrounding abortion is how women who undergo an abortion are represented in public talk. We analyse how women were named and positioned, and the attendant constructions of abortion, in South African newspaper articles on abortion from 1978 to 2005, a period during which there were radical political and legislative shifts. The name ‘woman’ was the most frequently used (70% of articles) followed by ‘girl/teenager/child’ (25%), ‘mother’ (25%), ‘patient’ (11%) and ‘minor’ (6%). The subject positionings enabled by these names were dynamic and complex and were interwoven with the localised, historical politics of abortion. The ‘innocent mother’ and the bifurcated ‘patient’ (woman/foetus) positionings were invoked in earlier epochs to promote abortion under medical conditions. The ‘dangerous mother’ and woman as ‘patient’ positionings were used more frequently under liberal abortion legislation to oppose and to advocate for abortion, respectively. The positioning of the ‘girl/teenager/child’ as dependent and vulnerable was used in contradictory ways, both to oppose abortion and to argue for a liberalisation of restrictive legislation, depending on the attendant construction of abortion. The neutral naming of ‘woman’ was, at times, linked to the liberal imaginary of ‘choice’.
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Representations of the subject ‘woman’ and the politics of abortion: an analysis of South African newspaper articles from 1978 to 2005
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona , Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6218 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006275
- Description: A key element in cultural and gender power relations surrounding abortion is how women who undergo an abortion are represented in public talk. We analyse how women were named and positioned, and the attendant constructions of abortion, in South African newspaper articles on abortion from 1978 to 2005, a period during which there were radical political and legislative shifts. The name ‘woman’ was the most frequently used (70% of articles) followed by ‘girl/teenager/child’ (25%), ‘mother’ (25%), ‘patient’ (11%) and ‘minor’ (6%). The subject positionings enabled by these names were dynamic and complex, and were interweaved with the localised, historical politics of abortion. The ‘innocent mother’ and the bifurcated ‘patient’ (woman/foetus) positionings were invoked in earlier epochs to promote abortion under medical conditions. The ‘dangerous mother’ and woman as ‘patient’ positionings were used more frequently under liberal abortion legislation to oppose and to advocate for abortion respectively. The positioning of the ‘girl/teenager/child’ as dependent and vulnerable was used in contradictory ways, both to oppose abortion and to argue for a liberalisation of restrictive legislation, depending on the attendant construction of abortion. The neutral naming of ‘woman’ was, at times, linked to the liberal imaginary of ‘choice’.
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How content analysis may complement and extend the insights of discourse analysis: an example of research on constructions of abortion in South African newspapers 1978–2005
- Authors: Feltham-King, Tracey , Macleod, Catriona
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6317 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021159 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1609406915624575 , http://ijq.sagepub.com/content/15/1/1609406915624575.abstract
- Description: Although discourse analysis is a well-established qualitative research methodology, little attention has been paid to how discourse analysis may be enhanced through careful supplementation with the quantification allowed in content analysis. In this article, we report on a research study that involved the use of both Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) and directed content analysis based on social constructionist theory and our qualitative research findings. The research focused on the discourses deployed, and the ways in which women were discursively positioned, in relation to abortion in 300 newspaper articles, published in 25 national and regional South African newspapers over 28 years, from 1978 to 2005. While the FDA was able to illuminate the constitutive network of power relations constructing women as subjects of a particular kind, questions emerged that were beyond the scope of the FDA. These questions concerned understanding the relative weightings of various discourses and tracing historical changes in the deployment of these discourses. In this article, we show how the decision to combine FDA and content analysis affected our sampling methodology. Using specific examples, we illustrate the contribution of the FDA to the study. Then, we indicate how subject positioning formed the link between the FDA and the content analysis. Drawing on the same examples, we demonstrate how the content analysis supplemented the FDA through tracking changes over time and providing empirical evidence of the extent to which subject positionings were deployed.
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