Culture, Discourse and Meaning Presentation By Bianca Kirkland

Introduction The project will explore how social identities are formed and reformed through the contemporary body-oriented pedagogies. I have chosen the body-orientated pedagogy of fitness training and will focus on two key domains of the social practice of fitness training in which these body-orientated pedagogies are taught. Discourses work to produce knowledge and power, particularly within the field of contemporary body-orientated pedagogies and fitness training. Often the individuals acting within the domains of this body-orientated pedagogy are placed as powerful models in which to emulate and the individuals viewing them are given very little power and expected to want to emulate that person.

Method Research questions What are the discourses that produce the knowledge/power dynamics of contemporary body- oriented pedagogies of fitness training and yoga? How are social subjects positioned within/by these discursive formations? Mills (cited in Jette, 2006, p.339) notes that “The technique of critical discourse analysis makes use of linguistic analytical methods to examine how texts are implicated in power relations”. The method critical discourse analysis and its research process will enable the project to answer the questions because it engages in an analyses of the language that is expressed and works to understand how sites, such as magazines and YouTube videos, use language to make meaning.

Data The two texts ‘Dancing with this star’ - April 2016 edition of Women’s Health and the YouTube video ‘5 Minute Butt and Thigh Workout for a Bigger Butt ’ - Youtube These texts will be useful in understanding the aims outlined in the project brief as they allow for the analysis of knowledge/power relations, the positioning of social subjects the tensions or contradictions within these discursive fields.

Findings Genre – Both texts have similar generic structures. The video is instructional, outlining a procedure while the article details a fitness routine in which the viewer can participate in at home in order to achieve a body like Julianne. Power – Both texts show an unequal balance of power between the person in the text and the viewer. In the video Kelly has greater expertise, authority and therefore more power. In the article a set four procedures are outlined by the writer, leaving no room for interpretation or input from the viewer. Contact - influenced greatly by the nature of videos and magazines and how they create a physically distant relationship. Both texts show a low frequency, brief and task-orientated relationship between the trainer and the viewer. Affect - There are marked evaluations throughout each text which are realised through the principle of amplification. In the video positive affects are made throughout, while the article, on the other hand, concentrates the use of affects in the production of an evaluation framework.

Insights Dominant discourses within our society work to produce knowledge and power. Magazines and YouTube have introduced a forum in which these body orientated discourses, such as women should be slim and men should be strong, are mobilised. These forums work to perpetuate and reinforce particular institutionalised practices and socially constructed discourses surrounding the self and the body. “The body for Foucault is not simply a focus of discourse, but constitutes the link between daily practices on the one hand and the large scale organization of power on the other” (Jette, p.333) Discourse establishes a coherent way of describing and categorising the social and physical world (Howson, 2013, p.104).

References Fitness Bender (2014, Februrary 26). 5 Minute Butt and Thigh Workout for a Bigger Butt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afghBre8NlI Howson, A. (2013). The body in consumer culture. In The body in society: An introduction (2nd ed., pp. 93-119). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press Jette, S. (2006). Fit for two? A critical discourse analysis of Oxygen fitness magazine. Sociology of Sport Journal, 23(4), 331-351. Spencer, A. (2016, April). Dancing with this star. Women’s Health, 41-44.