Translating Cultural Milkscapes: A Corpus-Based Cross-linguistic Analysis of Breastfeeding Discourses in Italian and English News

Mothers are increasingly seen as ‘risk managers’ (Furedi, 2002 / Reese, 2005 / Lee, 2008) responsible for mitigating potential dangers for their children, thus leading to a rise in seeking expert guidance in parenting decisions (Knaak, 2006). Due to societal pressures and judgments, decision-making concerning childbirth and breastfeeding is heavily influenced, with pro-breastfeeding organisations sometimes adopting a judgmental tone to dissuade formula feeding by appealing to women’s conscience and instilling guilt. In this respect, scholars (Kukla, 2006 / Avashai, 2007 / Wolf, 2007 / Lee & Bristow, 2009) have noticed a shift in the discourse surrounding breastfeeding, emphasising its moral dimension over health-related issues. This moralisation has resulted in the redefinition of breastfeeding as a benchmark for ‘good motherhood’, precipitating feelings of shame and self-blame among women who do not breastfeed and impacting on their psychological well-being. Into the bargain, multiple challenges, including medical conditions, work constraints and societal pressures, contribute to what is described as a ‘culture of pressure’ surrounding breastfeeding (Knaak, 2006), affecting women’s decision-making and experiences. In view of this, this pilot study sets out to uncover the predominant linguistic patterns used in the discursive (mis)representation of breastfeeding across a sample of Italian and English newspapers, aiming to facilitate a cross-linguistic comparison, shedding light on the practices and sub-discourses that emerge in the corpora investigated and reflecting on the challenges translators can encounter in dealing with them across languages. To this end, two corpora were compiled to look into the discourse on breastfeeding in Italian and English news media, each containing 100 articles published between November 9, 2021 and November 9, 2023. The Allattamento Corpus, focusing on Italian news outlets, and the Breastfeeding Corpus, incorporating contributions from national and international English news sources enabled a preliminary quantitative and qualitative analysis of linguistic patterns in breastfeeding discourse. This study turns to Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis (CBDA) (Baker & McEnery, 2015 / Egbert & Baker, 2019 / Egbert et al., 2020 / Baker, 2023) and Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005) in data analysis and interpretation, where CBDA helps to unearth linguistic patterns shaping public perceptions, while Appraisal Theory reveals evaluative components like judgment and engagement levels. Therefore, this paper will illustrate i) how pervasive societal discourses surrounding breastfeeding influence and restrict the dialogic space, perpetuating normative attitudes towards women who cannot or choose not to breastfeed; ii) the manners in which Italian and English linguistically construct and reproduce breastfeeding discourses and practices.