Discourse, the Body, and Identity

284 Pages·2003·2.57 MB·English

by  Justine Coupland, Richard Gwyn (eds.)

Discourse, the Body, and Identity
Also by Justine Coupland
LANGUAGE, SOCIETY AND THE ELDERLY: Discourse, Identity and Ageing
(with Nik Coupland and Howard Giles)
HANDBOOK OF COMMUNICATION AND AGING RESEARCH(co-edited with
Jon Nussbaum)
SMALL TALK
Also by Richard Gwyn
COMMUNICATING HEALTH AND ILLNESS
WALKING ON BONES
BEING IN WATER
LLUÍS PEÑARANDA/IWAN BALA
Discourse, the Body, and
Identity
Edited by
Justine Coupland and Richard Gwyn
Selection, editorial matter and Introduction © Justine Coupland and
Richard Gwyn 2003
Individual chapters (in order) © Charles Goodwin; Jon Hindmarsh and
Christian Heath; Alan Radley; Mike Hepworth; Marian Tulloch and John
Tulloch; Justine Coupland; Adam Jaworski; Ulrika Hanna Meinhof; Richard
Gwyn; Kathleen Woodward; Deborah Lupton and Wendy Seymour 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-333-96900-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90
Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of
this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2003 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-42894-6 ISBN 978-1-4039-1854-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403918543
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Discourse, the body, and identity/edited by Justine Coupland and
Richard Gwyn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Body, Human–Social aspects. 2. Sociolinguistics. 3. Body language.
4. Identity (Psychology) I. Coupland, Justine. II. Gwyn, Richard, PhD.
HM636 .D57 2002
306.4–dc21 2002073711
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
Contents
Editors’ Preface and Acknowledgements vii
Notes on the Contributors ix
1 Introduction 1
Justine Coupland and Richard Gwyn
Part 1 The Body as an Interactional Resource
2 The Body in Action 19
Charles Goodwin
3 Transcending the Object in Embodied Interaction 43
Jon Hindmarsh and Christian Heath
4 Flirting 70
Alan Radley
Part 2 Ideological Representations of the Body
5 Ageing Bodies: Aged by Culture 89
Mike Hepworth
6 Tales of Outrage and the Everyday: Fear of Crime and
Bodies at Risk 107
Marian Tulloch and John Tulloch
7 Ageist Ideology and Discourses of Control in Skincare
Product Marketing 127
Justine Coupland
8 Talking Bodies: Invoking the Ideal in the BBC Naked
Programme 151
Adam Jaworski
9 Bodies Exposed: A Cross-cultural Semiotic Comparison
of the ‘Saunaland’ in Germany and Britain 177
Ulrike Hanna Meinhof
v
vi Contents
Part 3 The Body, Pathology and Constructions of
Selfhood
10 Processes of Refiguration: Shifting Identities in Cancer
Narratives 209
Richard Gwyn
11 The Statistical Body 225
Kathleen Woodward
12 ‘I am Normal on the Net’: Disability, Computerised
Communication Technologies and the Embodied Self 246
Deborah Lupton and Wendy Seymour
Index of Names 267
Index of Subjects 270
Editors’ Preface and
Acknowledgements
This book grew from one of a series of meetings of the Cardiff
Roundtable in Language and Communication, all of which have been
held at the University of Wales conference centre at Gregynog Hall
(Newtown, Mid-Wales). The Roundtable on the theme ‘Discourses of
the Body’ was held in June 1999. This was the fourth Roundtable. The
themes of the first three were ‘Approaches to Media Discourse’,
‘Sociolinguistics and Social Theory’ and ‘The Sociolinguistics of
Metalanguage’. These have all in turn led to edited volumes. A fifth
meeting, in 2001, was held on the theme of ‘Narrative as a Resource’
and a sixth, in 2002, on ‘Language and Global Communication’. The
Roundtable series is designed as a way of integrating and critically
assessing research themes that have particular salience in sociolinguis-
tics, discourse, or the study of human communication generally. Each
Roundtable works by bringing together researchers who have distinc-
tive personal or disciplinary perspectives on the designated theme and
substantial research experience to draw on. The meetings at Gregynog
Hall allow the privilege of physical, social and intellectual space for
intensive discussion, debate and development of the relevant themes.
Like the other books emanating from the Roundtables, Discourse, the
Body and Identity is not a proceedings volume. Not all the contributors
to the Roundtable were able to contribute, and two of the chapters, by
Kathleen Woodward and by Deborah Lupton and Wendy Seymour
respectively, have been added to the set emerging from the original
meeting. The chapters are the result of significant reworking of the
original papers presented. The time that has elapsed between the
Roundtable and the publication of this volume has been longer than
we originally intended. As editors, we are grateful to our contributors
for their patience, which we take as reflecting their faith in the project,
and we have no doubt that a more stimulating collection has emerged
as a result of the additional time we have all been able to give our con-
tributions and we (as editors) have been able to give to our overseeing
of them.
‘The Body’ is currently the focus of concerted and energetic interest
across a wide range of academic disciplines. This book brings a
wide range of these disciplines together in one volume, integrating
vii
viii Editors’ Preface and Acknowledgements
contributionsfrom authors well known for their work in sociolinguis-
tics, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, discursive psychol-
ogy, sociology, and cultural and critical communication studies. Taken
together, the chapters provide much-needed grounded analyses of
texts on the body, talk about the body and embodied interaction,
produced from this range of interdisciplinary perspectives.
We are grateful to the British Academy for financial support for the
Roundtable on ‘Discourses of the Body’, alongside support given by the
Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University.
Particular acknowledgement is due to our colleague Adam Jaworski,
who played at least an equal role to the two editors in the organisation
and stewardship of the Roundtable, and in the early stages of the plan-
ning and preparation of this volume. Without his contributions, the
book would not have existed in its current form. We would also like to
thank Charles Goodwin for the insight and inspiration provided to the
editors by his commentaries during the Roundtable itself. Finally, Nik
Coupland deserves a great deal of recognition for his unfailing encour-
agement and intellectual support.
References
Bell, A. and Garrett, P. (eds) (1998) Approaches to Media Discourse. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Coates, J. and Thornborrow, J. (eds) (in preparation) The Sociolinguistics of
Narrative.
Coupland, N. Sarangi, S. and Candlin, C. (eds) (2001) Sociolinguistics and Social
Theory. London: Longman/Pearson Education.
Jaworski, A., Coupland, N. and Galasinski, D. (in press) The Sociolinguistics of
Metalanguage. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Notes on the Contributors
Justine Coupland is Senior lecturer at the Centre for Language and
Communication Research at Cardiff University. She has published
widely on discourse and identity, communication and the lifespan
and conversational ritual in journals including Language in Society,
Discourse and Society, Text, Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Socio-
linguisticsandResearch on Language and Social Interaction. Her publica-
tions include Small Talk (2000), the Handbook of Communication and
Aging Research (1995, with Jon Nussbaum), Language, Society and the
Elderly(1991, with Nikolas Coupland and Howard Giles), and Contexts
of Accommodation(1991).
Charles Goodwinis Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University
of California at Los Angeles. Publications include Conversational
Organization: Interaction Between Speakers and Hearers(1977),Rethinking
Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon(edited with Alessandro
Duranti, 1992), Conversation and Brain Damage (editor, 2002) and
numerous book chapters and articles in journals including American
Anthropologist, Research on Language in Social Interaction, Social Studies of
Science, Mind, Culture and Activity and the Journal of Pragmatics. His
interests include study of the discursive practices used by hearers and
speakers to construct utterances, stories and other forms of talk, lan-
guage in the professions, the ethnography of science, cognition in the
workplace and aphasia in discourse.
Richard Gwyn is Senior Lecturer in the School of English,
Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University. His research
interests include autobiographical narratives, the cultural mythology of
illness and media representations of the body. He has been involved in
joint research with colleagues at the University of Wales College of
Medicine into shared decision-making in general practice, and is
currently lead researcher in a study of patient narratives of chronic
fatigue. He is the author of Communicating Health and Illness(2002).
Christian Heath is a Professor in the Management Centre, King’s
College, London, and Director of the Work, Interaction and
Technology Research Group. He holds visiting Professorships at the
ix