GPH: Reflections of Inequalities: The Construction of HIV/AIDS in Africa in the Australian Print Media

From the paper of Shaw and Bailey, I could understand that the discourse analysis is a practice and a field of linguistics and communication specialised in analysing ideological constructions presented in a text regardless the truth of talk. Furthermore, the data used comes from different sources, for example, to analyse media texts and ideologies that produce them. In other words, according one of the possible readings, discourse is the social practice of producing texts. Text, in turn, is the product of discursive activity, the empirical object of discourse analysis, is building upon which focuses the analyst to seek, on its surface, the marks that guide scientific research. Therefore, is necessary to point out however, that the object of discourse analysis is discourse. The article I found interesting is “Reflections of Inequalities: The Construction of HIV/AIDS in Africa in the Australian Print Media” on: http://www98.griffith.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/handle/10072/29770/60466_1.pdf?sequence=1, which explores the interpretation of the pandemic of HIV/AIDS in the Australian print media using critical discourse analysis which can give an understanding of how HIV/AIDS in Africa is constructed by powerful groups and reflected in the media. The study demonstrate that one way of uncovering these discourses is to examine the role of language and how language is used to promote and reproduce dominant values and ideologies held by particular social groups. Although on the surface the texts often used politically correct language or seemingly presented a balanced view, a deeper examination of the texts revealed hidden biases and assumptions. These underlying biases and assumptions favoured the industrialised nations which are portrayed as knowledgeable and highlighted while the least developed nations texts are portrayed as disaster taking in account the controversial discourses acknowledged by Thabo Mbeki (former president of South Africa) which pointed out the role of poverty in the spread of HIV/AIDS.