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During Covid-19 lockdown in New Zealand from March to June 2020, gendered discourses appeared in artistic and commercial products featuring Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s Director General of Health and ‘hero of quarantine’. Using an analytical framework combining Foucauldian discourse analysis with critical multimodality, we explore how Ashley is shaped into existence through discourses portraying him as a superhero, love interest/sex symbol, national treasure, saviour, saint and authority figure. These emergent discourses ride on the wave of longstanding dominant discourses relating to gender and sexuality, alongside nation, class and ethnicity. While dominant discourses may provide reassurance when established realities are under threat, they simultaneously cause harm by reproducing unequal power relations between social groups. We contend that, even in periods of crisis, we should consider what broader messages we are sending when we latch onto the latest discursive trend.

People with functional neurological disorders (FND) are rendered invisible through stigma surrounding what – and who – is deemed medically ‘worthy’. Accusations of ‘hysteria’ and ‘malingering’ and being told ‘it’s all in your head’ are rooted in ideologies around gender and medical dualisms that contribute to the frequent erasure of FND experiences. A sociolinguistic approach that “walks backward into the future” can shed light on the powerful ways that language maintains this systemic marginalisation, and inform more equitable healthcare. In this seminar, I outline the recent ethnographic phase of my research in the UK and Europe. As well as visiting La Salpêtrière in Paris and exploring the Charcot era (the ‘heyday of hysteria’ in the late 1800s), I spent time with leading neurologists, gender experts, and medical sociologists. I highlight the affordances of this international interdisciplinary approach, and outline the project’s next steps in the Aotearoa context.

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In this final seminar for 2022 we hear from our wonderful PhD students in LALS. Come along to hear about the breadth of research they are undertaking in the School. This informal and celebratory seminar is a fitting way to round off what has been a rich and engaging seminar programme this year!