Chen, A orcid.org/0000-0003-2394-9959 and Eriksson, G (2022) Connoting a neoliberal and entrepreneurial discourse of science through infographics and integrated design: the case of ‘functional’ healthy drinks. Critical Discourse Studies, 19 (3). pp. 290-308. ISSN 1740-5904
Abstract
Riding on the rising concern of public health and the growing neoliberal self-care agenda, the food market has witnessed a surge in ‘healthy’ food despite the criticism of this food does not help consumers eat more healthily. A growing interest in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) is how food marketers colonise not only the food discourse but also the broader ideas and values such as health, politics, and environment. Contributing to this growing body of research, we look at one of the fastest-growing food trends, ‘functional drinks’, which claim to target physiological and psychological processes in the body, so that consumers can manage their health and performance. Company websites rely on forms of infographics to communicate how the products work. Adopting the notion of ‘integrated design’ from multimodal CDS, we show how these infographics, drawing on their affordances, are particularly useful in symbolising classifications and causalities which could not be accounted for in running texts. The paper argues that this is a way health and science converge with a neoliberal discourse of self-management and enterprise culture. Given the increased use of forms of integrated design in communication, more critical discursive work is needed in this area.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
Keywords: | Critical discourse analysis, Multimodality, integrated design, infographics, affordance Recontextualisation, science communication, neoliberalism, functional food |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Media & Communication (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 14 Dec 2021 15:48 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:51 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/17405904.2021.1874450 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:181527 |