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Part of
Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies
Edited by Monika Reif and Frank Polzenhagen
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 103] 2023
► pp. 146–169

Wellness

A cultural linguistic analysis of the conceptualisation of health

| Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

This chapter presents a Cultural Linguistic analysis of the conceptualisation of wellness as found in contemporary internet language. It considers how cultural conceptualisations found in the discourses of health, wellness and detoxification intersect with other conceptualisations including for example the notions of sacredness and purity associated with religion (Douglas 1966). wellness is structured by three broad cultural models: the ‘detox’ model, which incorporates aspects of Beck’s (1992) notion of ‘Risk Society’, a ‘medical countercultural’ model, and a ‘whole health’ model. This chapter also considers how knowledge of the cultural conceptualisations for wellness affects responses to medical advice from different sources. The analysis takes account of the cultural schemas (Quinn 1987; Sharifian 2011), image schemas (Johnson 1987) and conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) underpinning this view of health and demonstrates the value of Cultural Linguistic approaches in Medical and Health Humanities.

Keywords: conceptualisation of health and wellness, Clean Eating, wellness and science, wellness and pseudo-science
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology and overview of the data sources
  • 3.Historical and emerging concepts of health and wellness
  • 4.Mind, body, and spirit
  • 5.Wellness and pseudoscience
    • 5.1Doctors and science
    • 5.2Detoxing, cleansing
    • 5.3Toxins and ‘risk’
  • 6.Summary
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.06sco
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