A Critical Analysis of the British Newspapers’ Coverage of the Underweight and Overweight

Abstract By triangulating Corpus Linguistics with Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper sought to discover how the British popular press and quality press represented two polar ends of body image with respect to weight which are: underweight and overweight. The discursive representation of the subcategories of underweight (skinny, size zero, thin, slim, and slender) and overweight (plump, curvy, fat, overweight and obese) was investigated thoroughly to find out related themes, arguments, and attitudes in the newspaper corpus built from news and opinion columns published in the Daily Mail, The Sun, The Guardian, and The Times over a three-year period. One of the most significant findings of this study is that regardless of the press genre, the weight related issues were identified with gender. The high frequency of lexis showing females is proof that body weight is labelled as a feminine issue. Another noteworthy observation is the link established between body mass and socio-economic status. While higher socio-economic status was marked with thinness, fatness was associated with lower economic status.