Lesley Jeffries

Textual Construction of the Female Body

Acknowledgements Preface: Code and Body - an intervention Studying the Language of the Female Body: Some Context Genre, Text-Type and Rhetorical Strategy Naming and Describing Equating, Contrasting, Enumerating and Exemplifying Assuming and Implying The Body in Time and Space Processes and Opinions Conclusions Bibliography Index

Naming and Describing

This chapter takes as its theme two related textual processes which both have the potential to cast the topics they describe in specific ideological terms. Whilst the impetus for these analyses was the grammatical process of nominalization, we will see that very similar analyses can be made of nominals that are not derived from verbs. The term nominalization itself refers to the morphological derivation of a noun from a verb. These would include, for example, introduction, sleeping and significance from the verbs introduce, sleep and signify as in: The introduction of stricter controls on fraud was a government ploy. Sleeping in a hammock is bad for your back. The significance of that relationship escapes me.

Assuming and Implying

If some ideology can be delivered through processes of equating, contrasting and exemplifying, the way in which the world is structured ideologically can also be naturalized very effectively through the assumptions and implications that a text makes. This chapter explores these processes in the data under consideration and demonstrates both the construction of an assumed/implied reader and the construction of the assumed/implied perfect female form.