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Wiggins et al - eating your words JHP 2001.pdf (392.35 kB)

Eating your words: discursive psychology and the reconstruction of eating practices

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journal contribution
posted on 2012-03-19, 11:20 authored by Sally Wiggins, Jonathan Potter, Aimee Wildsmith
Psychological 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 Publications

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publication date

2001

Notes

This article was published in the Journal of Health Psychology [© SAGE Publications] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/135910530100600101

ISSN

1359-1053;1461-7277

Language

  • en