‘…through hell and back’: Emotionality and argument in the UK and Irish discourse on the Ketogenic Diet

The aim of this paper is to carry out a comparative case study to analyse the discourse strategies and argumentative commitments related to the emotive component of informative materials about the Ketogenic Diet (KD). On the basis of two small comparable corpora, the study adhered to predominantly qualitative guidelines, under which Plantin’s (2011) theorisation was taken as a reference. By focusing on the role of emotive communication in the discourse on the KD in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, the analysis reveals that emotions are instrumental in telling readers about patients’ and families’ feelings and mixed emotions, from despair caused by long-term pharmacological treatments full of harmful and debilitating side effects to anger over being denied proper information about or access to the KD, and the relief brought about by its administration. In addition, the implementation of Plantin’s categories helped identify the main factors through which such emotions are ‘argued’ and therefore established as legitimate across the two corpora. Finally, the findings led us to flesh out the overall argument structure in which emotions are frequently embedded.