Representation of the Frame HEALTHY/UNHEALTHY EATING in American Media Discourse

Abstract

Introduction. The article considers the problem of frame modeling of the HEALTHY/ UNHEALTHY EATING concept applying the methods of corpus linguistics. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the fact that no previous attempts have been made to model the frame of the HEALTHY/UNHEALTHY EATING concept. The relevance of the research is conditioned by the use of the collocation method to study the structure of the frame.Methodology and sources. The analysis of the structure of the HEALTHY/UNHEALTHY EATING concept was based on the method of frame modeling and the method of collocation allocation. The collocations selected in the texts of the News on the Web (NOW) corpus served as an empirical basis for the study. The NOW corpus contains more than 16 billion words of data from web newspapers and magazines.Results and discussions. The article presents a hierarchical model of the HEALTHY/UNHEALTHY EATING frame, highlights the following terminal slots “healthy/unhealthy food(s)”, “healthy/unhealthy cooking”, “healthy/unhealthy weight”, “eating regularity”, “eating moderation”, “eating balance”, “eating mindfulness”, “eating irregularity”, “eating excessiveness”, “eating imbalance”, “eating mindlessness”, “eating disorders”. The analysis of the collocations obtained, verbalizing each separate slot of the HEALTHY/UNHEALTHY EATING frame in the NOW case, allowed us to draw conclusions about the structure of subordinate subframes.Conclusion. The study shows that each individual slot of the frame under consideration has a complex structure, including terminal nodes-slots. The analysis of the selected collocations reveals those aspects of the HEALTHY/UNHEALTHY EATING concept that are most often discussed in media discourse. This includes ideas about eating mindfulness, regularity, moderation, eating disorders and various types of diets.