(Mis)representations of infertility: a survey on scientific reporting in English

Scientific discourse has seldom been investigated for any form of bias it may contain, as scholars have more concentrated on some fundamental recurrent patterns, than on less basic - but not less important -discursive features, on account of the absolutely non-emotionalcharacter which had been traditionally attributed to specialized texts. This study provides a brief overview of the infertility coverage in scientific journals in Britain, and shows that even in serious scientific discussion of a crucial problem such as that of infertility there is a tendency to present facts and data in such a way to covertly lay blame on women, and on the new personal ambitions they have in the post-feminist era, with linguistic strategies that surreptitously construct the female partner as responsible for all sorts of fertility problems, even for those that clearly originate elsewhere.