Discourse analysis of representations of the pregnant body: Social construction of the changing body in everday texts.

摘要

This study examined the theme of pregnancy bodily change as it is constituted and discussed in ten samples of everyday text. Discourse analysis surfaced a web of significations of the changing pregnant body. These meanings indicated a close connection to existing cultural discourses on women, female bodies, and femininity, and the power dynamics these discourses hold. While insisting on the pregnant body's particularity, the dominant construction of the pregnant body collapsed into the discourse on feminine ideal body, therefore endowing it with a hybrid---and confused---position. Whereas the discursive alternative indicated greater independence of prevalent discourses on femaleness and the female body, it did not reject them altogether, and thus reinforced and perpetuated some of their messages.