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Modafinil in the media : metaphors, medicalisation and the body
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Coveney, Catherine, Nerlich, Brigitte and Martin, Paul (2009) Modafinil in the media : metaphors, medicalisation and the body. Social Science and Medicine, Vol.68 (No.3). pp. 487-495. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.11.016 ISSN 0277-9536.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.11.016
Abstract
This paper uses UK media coverage of the sleep drug modafinil to investigate the medicalisation of sleep at a conceptual level. Using metaphorical frame analysis we investigate the conceptual links created in media discourse between sleep and health, and the body and technology in the UK. Using this novel analytical tool we explore under what circumstances modafinil is constructed as a necessary medical treatment or a (il)legitimate performance enhancement and, how in this process, various images of the body are constructed. We found that media discourse on modafinil was structured through four types of sleep discourse: patient, sports, recreational, and occupational. Each discourse was built up around the specific deployment of three central metaphorical frames ‘war’, ‘commodity’ and ‘competition’ that acted to construct the biological body in a particular way. How the body was framed in each discourse impacted upon how modafinil use was portrayed in terms of therapy or enhancement and the level of engagement with a medical rhetoric. This had distinct normative implications strongly influencing the legitimacy afforded to modafinil use in each domain. We argue that medical authority acts to legitimise modafinil use for repair, restoration and relief of suffering, whilst being deployed to pass judgment on its use in bodies already perceived as functioning normally. This leads us to conclude that conceptually, the acceptability of ‘enhancement’ is strongly tied to context of use and intricately related to medical social control.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology N Fine Arts > NE Print media R Medicine > R Medicine (General) R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology | ||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Social Science and Medicine | ||||
| Publisher: | Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd | ||||
| ISSN: | 0277-9536 | ||||
| Official Date: | 2009 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | Vol.68 | ||||
| Number: | No.3 | ||||
| Number of Pages: | 9 | ||||
| Page Range: | pp. 487-495 | ||||
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.11.016 | ||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||
| Funder: | Wellcome Trust | ||||
| Grant number: | WT080528MA |
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