Briggs Charles L
Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego, USA.
Med Anthropol Q. 2003 Sep;17(3):287-321. doi: 10.1525/maq.2003.17.3.287.
This article analyzes how Venezuelan public health officials collaborated with journalists in producing information about cholera in January-December 1991. It uses Michael Warner's (2002) observation that such public discourse involves a contradiction: it must project the image of reaching an actually existing public at the same time that it creates multiple publics as it circulates. The analysis explores the language ideologies that hide complex sets of practices, networks, and material conditions that shape how public discourses circulate. At the same time that epidemiologists targeted poor barrio residents, street vendors of food and drink, and indigenous people as being "at high risk," health education messages pictured women in well-equipped kitchens demonstrating cholera prevention measures. The gap between these ideal audiences and the discrepant publics created by their circulation limited the effectiveness of prevention efforts and created a substantial chasm between public health institutions and the publics they sought to reach.
本文分析了1991年1月至12月期间委内瑞拉公共卫生官员与记者如何合作制作有关霍乱的信息。它采用了迈克尔·沃纳（2002年）的观察结果，即这种公共话语存在一种矛盾：它必须在传播过程中创造多个公众群体的同时，展现出触及实际存在的公众群体的形象。该分析探讨了隐藏着复杂的实践、网络和物质条件的语言意识形态，这些因素塑造了公共话语的传播方式。与此同时，流行病学家将贫困社区居民、食品和饮料摊贩以及原住民列为“高风险”人群，而健康教育信息中描绘的是配备完善厨房的女性在演示霍乱预防措施。这些理想受众与因信息传播而产生的不同公众群体之间的差距，限制了预防工作的效果，并在公共卫生机构与它们试图触及的公众之间造成了巨大鸿沟。
