Specialist 19 order placed at 1000 am 2nd march
Step 1: Reading the texts
Start by reading the two texts you are going to analyse. They are reproduced at the end of this assignment. You are asked to reflect on the differences in the way the texts are constructed, their assumed target readership, and their purposes. You may wish to make notes, but you are not formally required to write anything at this stage.
Step 2: Analysing the texts
Systematically analyse each text in terms of the lexicogrammatical resources of mode introduced in Block 3. You are asked to focus specifically on how the differences between them are revealed in the lexicogrammatical choices.
The mode features may include:
• interactivity
• noun group composition
• noun group premodification
• nominalisation
• lexical density
• cohesion
• text connectors
• etc.
Identify features among those listed above, or additional ones, which you consider to be most important in creating textual meaning in each text. As the word limit does not allow space to discuss each of the bulleted items listed above, you will need to identify and explore the most salient ones.
We recommend you divide the texts into clauses before beginning the analysis, which would normally involve marking up the texts and highlighting specific linguistic features in order to identify patterns of usage. It is then up to you to decide how you want to organise your findings. For example:
• as tables to show the relative frequency of specific linguistic features (e.g. comparative structure and content of noun groups);
• as diagrams (e.g. representing thematic patterning);
• as colour or underlining to indicate relevant parts of the text (e.g. to display lexical density, types of theme, nominalisations etc).
You might wish to use a mix of the above. You will need to present your analysis, or parts of it, as an appendix, and draw upon this in a meaningful way in a discussion of your findings.
Step 3: Writing up your findings
This step requires you to write up a maximum of 1800 words (excluding bibliographic references and appendices) to compare the two texts in terms of mode. It is important that your interpretation is based on the analysis you did in Step 2. You should try to explain why specific lexicogrammatical choices might have been made and how these combine to create textual meaning.
You should include evidence of the findings that emerged from your analysis in Step 2, and avoid discussing any linguistic features that are not traceable back to your analysis. An analytical appendix of up to 1000 words is recommended. You should also support your discussion, where appropriate, by reference to module material.
Text 1
Mumsnet forum discussion: Why breastfeed past one?
Poster 1 Fri 25-Jan-19 14:28:54
Really interested in people’s opinions on this.
My boss chatting to me the other day…. I’m just back from my second maternity leave. DD is 14 months and I’m still breastfeeding her.
Boss asks me when I’m gonna stop feeding. I reply saying I’m not sure. We have a rhythm going and she loves it and so do I (usually). Told her I’d like to get to 18months. I told her it was great for them, a great way of bonding. I have a strong breast cancer hereditary link in my family and like the fact that the longer I breastfeed for the better my chances of not getting breast cancer. My DD finds it very comforting and I love that. Feels right… Also, they say it gets you back into shape quicker…. Not that I really worry…
I mentioned that the WHO recommends feeding until at least two years and she launched into a discussion about how this was only for developing countries. We had a slight argument about it (although both were reserved as we were in work) and then moved on.
She’s usually a very good boss, good person and a reliable friend albeit someone very much involved in her own world (a my way or the highway type of person).
So please tell me your opinions. If you breastfed past one year why did you do it and what do you think about the developing countries comment?
Poster 2 Fri 25-Jan-19 14:32:22
I really don’t understand why anyone has an opinion on how anyone else feeds their child! Why does she care so much?
I didn’t breastfeed past one, but I really have no opinion on anyone who does. If it works for you and your family why stop? It really is so odd that people feel so strongly about this.
Poster 3 Fri 25-Jan-19 14:34:26
I don’t discuss it with people. “That’s your opinion, this is my choice. Next.” Should suffice. Just shut it down!!!
Poster 4 Fri 25-Jan-19 21:20:45
Fed DD1 until 2yr 3mo or so, when my milk dried up due to second pregnancy. At the time I was considering tandem feeding when baby came. Did it for many reasons- Ds1 was 6 months old and a friend of a friend commented on it being odd to see such a big baby being breastfed.
Regarding the WHO comment…well I think there is a clue that it’s the WORLD health Organisation and issues advice for citizens worldwide, if the research showed it was only beneficial in developing countries, they would say that.
Try not to worry it’s her issue…
Poster 5 Fri 25-Jan-19 21:24:57
I think lots of people just like to pass judgement and make unwanted and unneeded comments.
Poster 6 Fri 25-Jan-19 21:29:21
I BF DD2 until she self weaned at 15 months. It just happened. She wouldn’t take a bottle, even with breast milk in it, so I just carried on BF. I had a few comments about it and just used to retort with “works for us”.
Poster 7 Fri 25-Jan-19 21:33:06
Does she have children herself? Maybe she regrets stopping earlier with her own/ feels guilty she didnt/ couldnt bf, and it shows through as defensiveness/ criticising your choice?
Poster 1 Sat 26-Jan-19 11:18:24
Thanks for all your comments. I was just really interested in the WHO comment and I did wonder about their recommendations.
Totally agree that probably in future the best way is to just say ‘it works for us’.
Key to discussion forum abbreviations:
DD: Dear Daughter
DD1: Dear Daughter 1 (first-born daughter)
2yr 3mo: 2 years and 3 months
DS1: Dear son 1 (first-born son)
BF: breastfed
DD2: Dear Daughter 2 (second-born daughter)
Text 2
Breastfeeding Greater Than 6 Months Is Associated with Smaller Maternal Waist Circumference Up to One Dec-ade After Delivery
Introduction
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months is optimal for infant health. However, an equivalently optimal duration for mothers to experience health benefits from breastfeeding has yet to be determined. This may be due to conflicting evidence regarding the association between breastfeeding and maternal health outcomes in the years after pregnancy.
Normal pregnancy is accompanied by weight gain and retention postpartum, and may contribute to increased insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease risk in later life. In particular, metabolically active visceral adipose tissue, a measure of abdominal obesity primarily distributed about the intra-abdominal organs, may increase substantially with a single pregnancy, independent of total body fat. Although body mass index (BMI) is commonly used in clinical and research practices to quantify overall adiposity, it does not distinguish among types of body fat mass or body fat distribution. Waist circumference (WC) as a measure of central adiposity has been shown to be a superior proxy for assessing long-term risk of coronary artery disease mortality, hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and the metabolic syndrome, independent of BMI.
Postpartum milk production for breastfeeding requires mothers to expend nearly 500 additional kilocalories per day. Some, but not all, previous studies examining the association between breastfeeding and maternal health have found that longer breastfeeding duration may be related to promotion of healthy weight loss and body composition. However, this detected effect may depend on whether or not breastfeeding is exclusive. In methodologically rigorous studies, longer breastfeeding duration was most consistently related to less weight retention and abdominal visceral adiposity and smaller WC. However, a linear dose–response relationship between breastfeeding duration and maternal weight change has not been consistently observed.
Prepregnancy obesity and healthy lifestyle continue to obfuscate associations between breastfeeding and maternal postpartum adiposity. Women who breastfeed may be systematically different from women who do not, in which the former are more likely to exhibit health-promoting behaviors. Propensity score analyses are one way to account for the potential bias that these systematic differences may introduce. For our purposes, the propensity score is the probability of breastfeeding >6 months and is estimated using logistic regression. Covariates in the propensity score model consist of variables before breastfeeding and are included to get the best estimate of the probability of breastfeeding >6 months. These propensity scores can be used analytically in two ways. First, women who breastfed >6 months are matched with women who breastfed ≤6 months based on their propensity to breastfeed. Women with the same probability (one who breastfed and one who did not) are matched. Second, propensity scores can be used to create inverse probability score weights. This creates a pseudo-population in such a way that the groups are balanced based on the underlying probability of breastfeeding. Both approaches balance the baseline characteristics of women who breastfed for longer durations with women who breastfed for shorter durations or not at all. These are two robust methods that can be used to mitigate confounding when using observational study data to estimate treatment effect size. To our knowledge, propensity scores have not been applied to studies of breastfeeding and long-term maternal adiposity.
Similar to WHO recommendations for infants, breastfeeding for 6 months may be optimal for mothers to experience long-term health benefits. We hypothesized that women who breastfed more than 6 months would have a smaller WC 7–15 years after delivery compared to women who breastfed less than or equal to 6 months, after accounting for prepregnancy and pregnancy factors that may influence the likelihood of breastfeeding. We used multivariable linear regression models as well as propensity score approaches to test this relationship.
References
Snyder, G.G., Holzman, C., Sun, T., Bullen, B., Bertolet, M. and Catov, J.M. (2019) ‘Breastfeeding Greater Than 6 Months is Associated with Smaller Maternal Waist Circumference Up to One Decade After Delivery’, Journal of Women’s Health, vol. 28, no. 4, [Online]. Available at www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/jwh.2018.7393 (Accessed 1 April 2019).
Mumsnet (2018) Talk [Online]. Available at www.mumsnet.com/Talk/breast_and_bottle_feeding/3489441-why-breastfeed-past-one (Accessed 28 June 2019).