“Where Angels Fear to Tread, Fools Will.” Who Is in Control of Your Sexual Health? A Discursive Examination of Self-Surveillance in an HIV and AIDS Prevention Campaign

• 作者: Irene M.M.Segopolo
• 来源期刊: 语言与符号学研究
• 学科: 文学
• 关键词: risk SELF responsibility discourse analysis panoptic GAZE
• 年，卷（期）: 2018,（4）
• 页码范围: 65-83
• 页数: 19页
• 分类号: H05

摘要

The global community witnessed vigorous and aggressive campaigns in the past three decades since the advent of HIV and AIDS. Various strategies have been used in this regard in order to advocate safer sex practices among the youth. The article argues that although three decades later, HIV infections are reported to be declining in the regions that were worst hard hit, specifically southern Africa, and there is still a need to promote condom-use among youth aged between 15 and 25. Through text and reception analysis, the article examines discourses of sexual self-responsibility in a purposively selected poster(advocating condom-use) from a host of HIV and AIDS prevention posters and banners advocating HIV and AIDS prevention in 2006-2009, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Informed by Foucault’s notion of the 'panoptic gaze' and 'techniques of the self', an in-depth textual analysis of the posters is conducted. Norman Fairclough’s CDA, augmented by Thompson’s ideologies and Kress and van Leeuwen’s The Grammar of Visual Design, are used to reveal the language and visual strategies used by the originators of the posters to reveal risk governmentality that may be subsumed in the interplay between the verbal and non-verbal features used in the texts. Furthermore, Hall’s reception theory is employed to reveal responses of the students through Focus Group Discussions. The article analyses the discursive self 'I' and the second-person deictic pronoun 'You' as strategies employed by the campaigns to promote self-surveillance and individual agency. The article argues for continued efforts in condom promotion to reduce HIV infections and while doing so, for the inclusion of youth in designing prevention messages.