Opening up the NHS to market : using multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine the ongoing corporatisation of health care communication

Brookes, Gavin and Harvey, Kevin (2016) Opening up the NHS to market : using multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine the ongoing corporatisation of health care communication. Journal of Language and Politics, 15 (3). pp. 288-302. ISSN 1569-2159

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Abstract

Since its implementation, the British Government’s controversial 2013 Health and Social Care Act has had far-reaching effects on English health care provision, not least the creation of 212 regional practitioner-led clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) which are now responsible for much of the service provision across the country. Taking as an example the website of one of these new commissioning groups, this study shows that multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) can reveal how health and social care matters are being increasingly framed within a corporate and neoliberal set of ideas, values, identities and social relations. Despite government assurances that the Act preserves the (non-commercial) founding values of the NHS, our MCDA provides textual evidence of the influence of neoliberal and commercial discourses operating across CCG websites, which appear to prioritise corporate rather than the practical, day-to-day concerns of patients.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Language and Politics
Additional Information:
© 2016 John Benjamins This article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Language and Politics. The article is under copyright, and the publisher should be contacted for permission to re-use the material in any form.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200
Subjects:
?? clinical commissioning groupsnhscommercialisationneoliberalismprivatisationmarketisationmultimodal critical discourse analysispsychology(all)sociology and political sciencelinguistics and languagehistorysocial sciences(all)arts and humanities(all) ??
ID Code:
78491
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
08 Mar 2016 09:30
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
31 Dec 2023 00:39