Wiggins et al - eating your words JHP 2001.pdf (392.35 kB)
Eating your words: discursive psychology and the reconstruction of eating practices
journal contribution
posted on 2012-03-19, 11:20 authored by Sally Wiggins, Jonathan Potter, Aimee WildsmithPsychological research into
eating practices has focused
mainly on attitudes and
behaviour towards food, and
disorders of eating. Using
experimental and
questionnaire-based designs,
these studies place an emphasis
on individual consumption and
cognitive appraisal, overlooking
the interactive context in which
food is eaten. The current
article examines eating
practices in a more naturalistic
environment, using mealtime
conversations tape-recorded by
families at home. The empirical
data highlight three issues
concerning the discursive
construction of eating practices,
which raise problems for the
existing methodologies. These
are: (1) how the nature and
evaluation of food are
negotiable qualities; (2) the use
of participants’ physiological
states as rhetorical devices; and
(3) the variable construction of
norms of eating practices. The
article thus challenges some key
assumptions in the dominant
literature and indicates the
virtues of an approach to eating
practices using interactionally
based methodologies.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Citation
WIGGINS, S., POTTER, J. and WILDSMITH, A., 2001. Eating your words: discursive psychology and the reconstruction of eating practices. Journal of Health Psychology, 6 (1), pp. 5 - 15.Publisher
© SAGE PublicationsVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publication date
2001Notes
This article was published in the Journal of Health Psychology [© SAGE Publications] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/135910530100600101ISSN
1359-1053;1461-7277Publisher version
Language
- en