Abstract
Aims: Popular and professional media play a significant role in shaping the social construction of prescription medication. How people understand medication is largely determined by how it is represented in the texts that they read. Different cultural and national contexts create significant variation in these constructions. This research looks at the social constructions of the five mostly frequently discussed antidepressants in Chinese and British newspapers and medical journals during a 15-year period, which were fluoxetine, citalopram, sertraline, venlafaxine and duloxetine. We aimed to discover themes of importance in different national contexts and how Chinese and British people's understanding and attitudes towards their use of antidepressants have been influenced by such constructions. Methodology: This research makes use of a corpus linguistics tool called Sketch Engine to discover patterns of discussions on antidepressants. Four corpora were built for this research project: