bodiessocalled

Bodiessocalled is a neologism used in body studies and critical discourse analysis to describe how bodies are named and judged through qualifiers such as so-called and called. The term highlights the evaluative and power-laden dimension of bodily discourse, where labeling practices can legitimize or delegitimize certain bodies or body attributes. By combining “bodies” with “so-called,” the concept signals that categories like health, normality, and disability are not natural facts but contingent social constructs contested by different actors.

Origins and usage: The term appears in scholarly discussions within medical anthropology, disability studies, and sociology of the body, particularly in analyses of medicalization, stigma, and biopolitics. It is typically applied to linguistic frames in clinical notes, media coverage, policy rhetoric, and everyday talk that prefaces body-related terms with “so-called” to express skepticism, moral judgment, or precaution.

Function: It serves to reveal power relations in the production of knowledge about bodies, to critique taken-for-granted categories, and to foreground alternative framings that attend to lived experience and social context.

Examples: “the so-called obesity epidemic” and “the so-called healthy body” appear in critical texts to challenge normalization. In clinical contexts, clinicians may use the phrase to mark provisional or contested diagnoses.

Limitations: Critics caution that excessive use of the term can obscure agency, overlook context-specific meanings, or become a rhetorical trope rather than a rigorous analytic tool.

See also: medicalization; social construction of disease; disability studies; stigma; biopolitics.

Further reading: discussions of language, embodiment, and power in contemporary social theory.