Culture, Discourse and Meaning Presentation Carina Banks (18069192)

Project Brief: The project will explore how social identities are formed and reformed through the contemporary body-oriented pedagogies of fitness training and yoga. The project will examine key sites and domains of the social practice of fitness training and yoga used to teach these body-oriented practices. Texts drawn from these sites or domains will be explored using critical discourse analysis theory and analytical techniques. These sites and domains will also be used to explore and reflect on the methods and analytical tools of critical discourse analysis.

Critical Discourse Analysis: “The technique of critical discourse analysis makes use of linguistic analytical methods to examine how texts are implicated in power relations. As such, it takes a more “ground-level approach” to discourse than Foucault, who views discourse as something that produces an effect, as opposed to something that can be “analysed in isolation”. However, because both view language as central to the construction of subjectivity, critical discourse analysis complements a Foucauldian analysis by allowing for a close analysis of ʻrealʼ texts in context, which can then be discussed from a broader perspective. “ (Jett , 2006, p. 9)

The research questions for the project include: 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? The project uses a critical discourse analysis method where texts are selected and analysed as instances of discourses so to describe the discursive formations of knowledge and power which is active in the texts.  Social identities are made possible by and negotiated within discursive formations, enacted through the deployment of signifying systems most centrally language.

Based on the analysis from Reports One and Report Two the preliminary findings suggest that: The texts teach the social practices of women's fitness training and that they adhere to the structures that portray the 'ideal women'. How genre communicates fitness discourse. The use of fitness terminology- the semi specialized shortened and abbreviated language of the gym that has become familiar. There is a portrayal of an active and healthy lifestyle. The texts embrace the social conventions of body orientated pedagogies and how they communicate these ideas through fitness discourse. Tenor and the formation of social relationships through power/status, contact and affect. Context is produced through language and the impact of speech functions on social roles.

Based on the analysis from Reports One and Report Two the preliminary findings suggest that: The texts teach the social practices of women's fitness training and that they adhere to the structures that portray the 'ideal women'. How genre communicates fitness discourse. The use of fitness terminology- the semi specialized shortened and abbreviated language of the gym that has become familiar. There is a portrayal of an active and healthy lifestyle. The texts embrace the social conventions of body orientated pedagogies and how they communicate these ideas through fitness discourse. Tenor and the formation of social relationships through power/status, contact and affect. Context is produced through language and the impact of speech functions on social roles.

Articles written by Jett, Howson and Eskes, Duncan and Miller were important in the project as they provided critical insight into fitness discourses and they helped to shape and develop my ideas. Some of the critical insights provided by Howson: A person's sense of self and how the body is particularly significant in such a context (Howson, pg 93). How individuals participate in order to construct and maintain a sense of self and a social identity in the modem age (Howson, pg 93). A critical insight provided by Jett: How in contemporary Western society the body remains as a site of control and discipline (Jette, pg1). And critical insights from Eskes, Duncan and Miller: The changing "fashionable health and fitness movement" (Eskes, Duncan and Miller, pg 318). The social construction of the ideal feminine body as slender, muscular and curvy (Eskes, Duncan and Miller, pg 319).  

References: Austen, A., & Lawrenson, A. (March 2016). Hunger games. 'Best Body' Australian Women's Health, 34-35. Eskes, T. B., Duncan, M. C., & Miller, E. M. (1998). The discourse of empowerment: Foucault, Marcuse, and women's fitness texts. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 22(3), 317-344. Howson, A. (2013). The body in consumer culture. 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.   XHIT Daily. (June 2013). How To Lose Arm Fat. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAGfBjvIRFI.