The discoursive construction of women in public campaigns against drugs : looking into its ideological work

Abstract

This paper analyse the way women are talked about in portuguese public campaigns against drugs, using a critical discourse approach, Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996), Wodak (1997), van Dijk (2001). When women are chosen as topics of discourse, they are constructed as two types of mothers: as mothers in the problematic family that gives raise to addiction, and as addict mothers. My aim is to show the role of various linguistic resources and of its interplay with semiotic ones in the construction of these two social figures. I argue that parental discourse in prevention campaigns functions to reinforce gender diference by maintaining a sexist ideology, one that serves to obscure public responsibility for the conditions under which women are likely to be pregnant and perform mother-work, and that places undue burdens on women. At the same time, this kind of ideological work also functions to reinforce the otherness of drug users and, through that, to justify policy decisions.