Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective on Norwegian Public Health Nursing Curriculum in a Time of Transition

Abstract

Discourse analysis is an area of social linguistics, which can advance social theory in the direction of language. Public health nurses are to perform health promotion and disease prevention work on an individual and population level. By identifying how features of different discourses are constructed and maintained, combining linguistics tools and social science perspectives, the purpose was to provide an understanding of the health promotion and disease prevention discourse in the public health nursing curriculum to reveal governmental strategies for public health nursing education in a time of transition. Fairclough's three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis that consists of the analytical dimensions social events, social practices, and social structures was carried out. There is a linguistic-discursive dialectic between the dimensions. The analysis revealed four discourses in the curriculum text: a contradictory health promotion and disease prevention discourse; a paternalistic meta-discourse; a hegemonic individual discourse; and a hegemonic discourse for interdisciplinary collaboration. The results indicate a hegemonic disease prevention discourse, while the health promotion discourse being more disguised. The analysis revealed how language functions ideologically, and in line with the sociolinguistics, how the role of the language in the curriculum text can have consequences for the social work of public health nurses.

Roma Representation in Danish Roma Policy and Public Discourse—A Critical Analysis

“…First, we performed textual analysis focusing on the choice of words/synonyms to see how opinions were expressed through these choices and how grammatical expression and text structure support the nature of both the inclusion strategy and newspaper articles. Textual analysis is a description of the text focusing on choice of words or statements that can reveal both hidden meaning and illustrate a political agenda [37]. Furthermore, textual analysis can reveal different types of discourses and any ideological struggles going on in the text.…”

“…The relationship between the social practice and the text is mediated through discursive practice. There is a dialectic between the three dimensions [37]. A social institution includes specific orders of discourse and of ideological norms [37].…”

“…There is a dialectic between the three dimensions [37]. A social institution includes specific orders of discourse and of ideological norms [37]. The orders of discourse are composed by genre and discourses, whereas the genre both constitutes and is constituted by the specific use of phrases and words [21,38].…”

Discursive construction of the patient in online clinical cancer pathways information

“…It is a cultural production where we bring our preunderstanding of the field into the analysis (Rogers & Schaenen, 2014). As registered nurses the first and third author brought a preunderstanding of the field to the analysed documents, which can be both a strength and a limitation; a strength by knowing the field and limitation by the possibility of being blind to non‐nursing aspects in the texts (Dahl, 2017). The fact that the second author does not have an affiliation to the Norwegian health system balanced the analysis and results.…”