Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Legislative Prescriptivism — Exploring the Legislative Enforcement of Minor Linguistic Variants and its Ramifications for Consumers and the Retail Sector
AU - Malory, B.
PY - 2022/7/31
Y1 - 2022/7/31
N2 - Plant-based products are increasing in popularity, as growing numbers of people choose plant-based lifestyles and eschew animal-based products. Strict laws govern the language that can be used to describe such products, however, both within the EU and in the UK. Against this backdrop, this paper employs mixed methods to provide analysis of the ways an-imal-based and plant-based ‘dairy’ products are packaged, marketed, retailed, and discussed in the UK. Using an approach rooted in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), it presents qualitative exploration of the means, both linguistic and multimodal, by which producers and retailers negotiate proscriptive legislation, as well as quantitative, corpus-based, analysis of lexis chosen to denote some plant-based products in internet discourse. Triangulating these methodological approaches, this study reveals an apparent disparity between vernacular UK usage in relation to plant-based dairy and how these products can be labelled in commercial contexts. Computer-assisted linguistic analysis provides quantitative means of analysing us-age, whilst qualitative techniques enable detailed consideration of different ways prescrip-tivism in this domain is interpreted and negotiated. This provides a holistic consideration of the impact legal prescription of certain linguistic variants has on commercial and individual usage, as well as demonstrating the value of critically-engaged approaches to prescriptivism.
AB - Plant-based products are increasing in popularity, as growing numbers of people choose plant-based lifestyles and eschew animal-based products. Strict laws govern the language that can be used to describe such products, however, both within the EU and in the UK. Against this backdrop, this paper employs mixed methods to provide analysis of the ways an-imal-based and plant-based ‘dairy’ products are packaged, marketed, retailed, and discussed in the UK. Using an approach rooted in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), it presents qualitative exploration of the means, both linguistic and multimodal, by which producers and retailers negotiate proscriptive legislation, as well as quantitative, corpus-based, analysis of lexis chosen to denote some plant-based products in internet discourse. Triangulating these methodological approaches, this study reveals an apparent disparity between vernacular UK usage in relation to plant-based dairy and how these products can be labelled in commercial contexts. Computer-assisted linguistic analysis provides quantitative means of analysing us-age, whilst qualitative techniques enable detailed consideration of different ways prescrip-tivism in this domain is interpreted and negotiated. This provides a holistic consideration of the impact legal prescription of certain linguistic variants has on commercial and individual usage, as well as demonstrating the value of critically-engaged approaches to prescriptivism.
KW - prescriptivism
KW - corpus linguistics
KW - multimodality
KW - legislation
KW - critical discourse analysis
KW - discourse
KW - UK
U2 - 10.14762/jll.2022.036
DO - 10.14762/jll.2022.036
M3 - Journal article
VL - 11
SP - 36
EP - 59
JO - International Journal of Language and Law
JF - International Journal of Language and Law
ER -