Medical Discourse on Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Condition: A Contrastive Critical Discourse Analysis of Dietary Recommendations of Medical Associations and Research Articles

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the use of discourse by medical associations and in research articles through Van Dijk’s Semantic Macrostructure Rules of Critical Discourse Analysis. This study is qualitative in nature and the data has been collected from eight research articles and six top medical associations related to a dietary disease: Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Condition. Van Dijk’s macrostructure rules have been applied on the dietary recommendations only, suggested by the selected medical associations and research articles. The data has been analyzed by using the categories defined by Van Dijk i.e., Generalization, Deletion, Selection and Construction through AntConc to find and contrast the frequencies of particular terms. Results have revealed that there is more generalization and deletion as medical associations omitted the specific details in their discourse while the research articles are selecting jargons of medical for the construction of discourse. There is more cohesion and coherence in the discourse of research articles, but the medical associations are constructing an ambiguous or generalized discourse to hide the information. As a result, with the support of capitalism, medical discourse of associations has been badly influenced.