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Abstract
The study inquires about the means by which corporate discourse formulates, invokes and challenges scientific research by examining three case studies of organizations in the fast food and soft drinks industry. Critical discourse analysis carried out on corporate sections dedicated to healthy lifestyles reveals all three explored discursive streams acknowledge customers' changing needs and consumption patterns. They introduce healthy lifestyles up on the corporate agenda, as cornerstone for their identity and governance strategy of fast-food and soft drinks producers. As overall discursive pattern, corporate public relations jargon constantly employs disclaimers and generic terms such as "evolution", "development", "strategy", "partnership", "transparency", without providing specific assessment criteria to map down the intended intervention. The article provides rhetoric illustrations enacted through omission, disclaimers, backgrounding and reframing effects. The overriding discursive rationale implies that healthy diets are still low-priority for leading food and drinks producers. The documented companies indicate in their PR communication two strategies of fighting against the scientifically proven negative impact of their traded products: the individual choice paradigm and the social compensation strategy or health-washing. The article highlights some of the inconsistencies of discourses on healthy food that apparently are counter-intuitive enough to undermine corporate interests, while such discourses peddle on the idea of sincerity, transparency and ethical conduct. All three case studied corporations strive to safeguard their threatened reputation across discursive practices by acknowledging their weaknesses as sign of honesty. Further reflection on critical discourse analysts' mandate and implications for practice are explored.
Keywords
Fast food, obesity, health-washing, critical discourse analysis
Introductive outlook
The study inquires about rhetoric means by which the dichotomy healthy-unhealthy nutrition is being reproduced across PR discourses. The study proposes a reflection on the interplay between science and PR messages that aim to persuade consumers of the legitimacy of fast food and soda drink consumption. This preliminary contribution is relevant for the journal's scope because it supports the effort of structuring and understanding public relations speech within an interactional persuasive rhetoric grounded in empirical data. The multiplicity of discursive practices across the highly controversial realm of fast food and soda drinks is explored using the challenging arguments of scientific input filtered-out by PR output. Hence, theoretically prompted questions find answers by data-driven argumentation.
The current study aims to explore...