Cultural Milkscape: A Corpus-Based Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Breastfeeding Discourses in Italian and Anglophone News

Applying corpus-assisted cross-linguistic discourse analysis, this article investigates how breastfeeding is discursively constructed in contemporary Italian and Anglophone news media. Two comparable news corpora, each consisting of 100 newspaper articles published between 2021 and 2023, were compiled from the Nexis Uni database. The study combines corpus-based discourse analysis with the appraisal framework to examine how breastfeeding is represented, evaluated and legitimised in media discourse. Frequency analysis and concordance examination of both datasets reveal that infant feeding is overwhelmingly framed as a maternal responsibility, with mothers emerging as the central social actors while fathers remain largely marginalised. Across the two corpora, breastfeeding is consistently represented as the optimal and morally desirable method of infant feeding, often supported through references to scientific authority that function to reinforce normative assumptions about maternal responsibility. While these similarities are evident, the analysis also points to certain cross-linguistic differences in how breastfeeding is discursively framed. In the Italian data, greater emphasis is placed on supportive infrastructures and institutional initiatives that enable breastfeeding in everyday contexts. By contrast, the English-language corpus more often presents breastfeeding in terms of individual challenge, personal responsibility and public health advocacy. Taken together, these patterns suggest that media discourse plays a role in shaping expectations around motherhood, positioning breastfeeding not only as a health recommendation but also as a marker of what counts as appropriate maternal behaviour.