Publications

Publication details [#61002]

Harvey, Kevin and Gavin Brookes. 2016. Opening up the NHS to market. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine the ongoing commercialisation of health care. Journal of Language and Politics 15 (3) : 288–303.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/jlp

Annotation

Since its implementation, the British Government’s controversial 2013 Health and Social Care Act has had far-reaching effects on health care provision in England, not least the creation of 212 regional practitioner-led clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) which are now responsible for much of the service provision across the country. Taking as an example the website of one of these new commissioning groups, this study shows that multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) can reveal how health and social care matters are being increasingly framed within a corporate and neoliberal set of ideas, values, identities and social relations. Despite government assurances that the Act preserves the (non-commercial) founding values of the NHS, this study's MCDA provides textual evidence of the influence of neoliberal and commercial discourses operating across this particular website, which appear to be just as much about promoting an appealing corporate identity as responding to the practical, day-to-day concerns of patients.