This introductory chapter lays the theoretical and methodological groundwork for the rest of the monograph. It begins by introducing the topic of obesity and by reviewing existing (linguistic) research on it. It then introduces the context of the UK news media in detail. Finally, the chapter introduces the corpus of obesity newspaper articles assembled for this study and the methodological approach we use to analyse this data, which combines corpus linguistics with critical discourse studies.

Having explored the representation of obesity in the press from a range of methodological and thematic perspectives in the previous chapters, this final analytical chapter focuses on how such representations are received by readers. This chapter describes the construction and analysis of the reader comments accompanying a sample of articles about obesity published on the most-visited online newspaper in the UK – the MailOnline. By comparing these comments to their corresponding articles, the analysis demonstrates how the readers’ comments tend, in the main, to go further than the articles in the extent to which they stigmatise and shame people with obesity, thereby offering more negative and extreme takes on the obesity-related stories being reported. Yet, at the same time, the analysis also shows the ways in which readers can challenge the original articles and, indeed, other commenters, through comments which offer counter discourses to the dominant shaming ones.

This chapter examines the use of language and discourse that shames and stigmatises people with obesity and, conversely, that which could be viewed as reclaiming the concept, such as through fat acceptance and body positivity. In particular, the analysis focuses on how people with obesity are named, the characteristics that are attributed to them and the actions that they are represented as performing. This chapter also explores a theme that sits slightly outside of these foci but which emerged during the analysis; that of the ‘obese criminal’.

This chapter commences our analysis by using the keywords approach to explore uses of language (and, by extension, representations) that are characteristic of all sections of the British press when reporting on the topic of obesity. We divide our corpus into four sections according to newspapers’ format and political leaning. These four sections are left-leaning broadsheets, left-leaning tabloids, right-leaning broadsheets and right-leaning tabloids. The analysis in this chapter focuses on words that were key across all these sections (i.e. ‘shared’ keywords) and so provide an inductive ‘way in’ for exploring representations of obesity that are pervasive across the press.

This chapter concludes the monograph by summarising its main findings. The chapter aims to explain the dominance of certain patterns as well as the relative minority status of others. This chapter also offers methodological reflections on the study and asks how representations which challenge the types of stigmatising and shaming discourses observed might be challenged in future.

This chapter explores how representations of obesity intersect with discourses relating to other aspects of identity, focusing in particular on gender. The analysis is divided into two halves. The first half of the chapter examines the representation of men and women with obesity using collocation and compares the representations against each other, relating these to wider gendered discourses in society. The second half analyses a particular type of article where a focus on gender is foregrounded – weight loss narratives. Specifically, this part of the analysis compares the ways in which men’s and women’s weight loss is reported in the press. Overall the analysis reported in this chapter points to the ways in which representations of obesity can depend on the gender and sex identity of the person or group in question. While men’s obesity is represented as exceptional and their weight loss methods as unusual or extreme, obesity in women is depicted as something that is more widespread but also more harmful, including to their children and other relatives.

In this chapter, we report our correlations on associations between conspiracy beliefs and conspiracy norms. This novel correlation has not been considered in prior research. Similarly, we also review the literature on the social networks on which conspiracy beliefs spread, and discuss our own data on the dissemination of tweets authored by media accounts and with varying levels of fear language.

This chapter analyses the discourse surrounding four words that are frequent and statistically salient across all sections of the press: healthy, body, diet and exercise. Through these foci, the analysis explores how the press constructs a link between health and not having obesity, as well as how individuals are implored to eradicate their obesity and reduce their risk of obesity by regarding their bodies as entities that are separate to their selves and subjecting their bodies to gruelling treatment, including through extreme diets and intense exercise regimes. This chapter questions which of the weight loss methods widely reported across the press are likely to engender weight loss in readers and, more importantly, whether or not they are likely to encourage healthy attitudes towards the body and the self.

In this chapter, obesity representations are analysed in terms of the ways they intersect with discourses around social class. Specifically, the analysis focuses on the representation of four social class groups: i) upper class, ii) middle class, iii) working class and iv) underclass. The analysis points to a range of ways in which representations of these specific social class groups intersect with and contribute towards the broader representation of obesity. These representations are complex, with few straightforward patterns. However, generally, there are telling differences between newspapers with different political leanings. While those on the left of the political spectrum argue for the role of social inequality as a contributing factor in the development of obesity, those on the right argue that obesity is something that is not influenced by social class, as it exists at all class levels. Instead, newspapers to the political right argue that obesity results from individual factors, such as lack of self-control and over-dependence on the ‘nanny state’.

This chapter builds on the previous chapter by examining the corpus in terms of the same four sections that were analysed previously (i.e. left-leaning broadsheets, left-leaning tabloids, right-leaning broadsheets and right-leaning tabloids). Where the previous chapter focused on language and representations that were shared by these sections, and so are characteristic of the press as a whole, this chapter instead focuses on differences between them. Specifically, the analysis uses the keywords approach to compare these different parts of the press against each other, with the resulting keywords signposting discourses and representations of obesity that are characteristic of each section of the press relative to the others.

This chapter explores trends in obesity coverage over time, both in terms of areas of stability and change. Two perspectives on time are adopted. First, changes to keywords are studied on a year-by-year basis, spanning the duration of the corpus (i.e. 2008 to 2017). Second, change is studied in terms of the annual press cycle, with keywords obtained by comparing articles in terms of the particular month in which they are published (e.g. comparing articles published in January against those published in all other months combined, and so on). The first part of the analysis shows how certain discourses, namely those which represent obesity as a matter of personal responsibility, are increasing in relative frequency over time, while those which represent obesity as something resulting from social and political factors are in decline. The second part of the analysis shows how obesity representations can be driven by the news values associated with particular events in the annual (press) cycle, such as Christmas, Easter, summer holidays and the timing of children’s school terms.

This part of the book demonstrates the many ways in which we can come to understand and enjoy a poem. It takes the reader through a series of shorter sections, each of them showing how by asking a particular question of a poem – about its verbal effects, about its form, about its emotional impact, about its subject matter – we can start to develop an understanding of it. The sections offer accessible introductions to technical matters such as rhyme and metre, but they also show how questions of technique in poetry are inseparable from the questions of what a poem has to say and to show us. Examples from a broad range of poetry written in English are used to illustrate the different approaches.

The outcome of tasting as an embodied sensorial practice is, in the context of the gourmet shop, an assessment. This chapter offers a systematic analysis of the way not only assessments are verbally uttered, but also preceded and accompanied by facial expressions and other incarnated manifestations constituting embodied assessments. These are closely witnessed by the seller observing the customer tasting, and in some cases even anticipated by them. Assessments are a type of outcome of tasting that contrasts with outcomes, like descriptors, characterizing other activities – for example in tasting sessions participants rather search for the best word to express the tasting qualities of the sample. Even when minimal, they both address the quality of the sensed item and its coincidence with personal taste and orient to the embeddedness of the sensorial experience within the local actions and the global activity: assessing often retrospectively responds to a previous offer or proposal of the seller and prospectively orients to the closing of the purchase, in the form of a decision about buying (or not, in the case of negative assessments). Thus, assessments are followed by decision-making and often enable the seller to anticipate the latter. Assessments do not only complete the sensory experience of tasting in an intersubjective way but also demonstrate its relevance for broader activities, which reflexively also shape it.

The model of the five senses is persistent through Western culture since Aristotle. This chapter explores the contemporary debates that animate the study of the senses across disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. It also locates the specific approach of sensoriality developed in this book within this interdisciplinary landscape, insisting on the importance of language, the body and action. Grounded on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, the book proposes a novel conceptual and analytical approach, focusing on sensing (rather than the senses) in social interaction, and insisting on the way sensing is embedded in situated actions and activities, and more specifically within social interaction. This provides for a conception of sensoriality that is social, praxeological, and intersubjective, based on the way people engage in sensorial practices mobilizing their body and talk, as well as the way these actions acquire their intelligible, accountable and normative character in and through social interaction.

This chapter analyses a set of keywords which were used to refer to ‘Us’, that is the author of the text and the social group that they belong to, which includes the reader as a potential member of that group. The keywords examined in this chapter are Islam, Allah, Muslim, brothers, believers, Ummah and you. The chapter introduces the reader to the main method of analysis which involves identification of representation surrounding each keyword via grammatical patterns through the corpus analysis tool Sketch Engine.

This chapter functions as a literature review, beginning with a summary of some of the terminological issues surrounding the study of terrorism. This is followed by an overview of theorisations of terrorism as communication, that is, the theory that violent acts are communicative. We then discuss not the practices and (verbal) expressions related to clandestine violence undertaken by terrorist individuals or groups. We explore some of the findings from previous research relating to the patterns in terrorists’ words and communicative strategies. We then turn to violent jihadist discourse specifically considering issues around polarised language and its relation to grievance-based discourse, the creation of shared identity, intertextual use of historical and theoretical texts and evocation of authority. We conclude by suggesting why the dearth of research on terrorist discourse poses problems for the creation of viable counter-terrorism measures.

In this chapter, the focus remains on language but moves away from representations around particular words to instead consider the ways in which specific types of language are used as persuasive devices in themselves. Here, we take another meaning of discourse, one which relates to the concept of register, text-type or genre and involves issues relating to stylistic choice. We thus explore some of the specific linguistic strategies that authors use in the data in order to highlight how these might contribute to the legitimacy or persuasiveness of the extremist discourse. We examine keywords that index formal register, as well as those connected to the concepts of truth and quotation. This is followed by a consideration of how code-switching into Arabic is employed in the texts.