AIDS and its Associates: A Discourse Representation of the Disease

Abstract

In this article, an intertextual analysis is carried out to examine the various voices that are given space in the text and see how they are woven together textually. This entails examining how they are recontextualised in the new context and how they are framed in relation to each other and in relation to the writer’s voice. This study is based on media texts, with particular emphasis given to the boundaries drawn in the data between public and private orders of discourse, and the ambivalence of ‘voice’ embedded within the order of discourse. The investigation of the present study is undertaken using the analytic paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) employed by Fairclough (1992, 1995a, 1995b, 2003). The data is extracted from TIME magazine since reports on AIDS were first published there in 1983 until 2005. Adhering to the CDA paradigm as constructed by Fairclough, the article investigates how the media in the advent of disseminating information on AIDS, have ‘recontextualised’ scientific discourse about the disease for public consumption. The results from the intertextual analysis indicate that the representation of AIDS is constructed within the paradigm of how the disease is defined, and the associative meanings attached to the disease.