The term ‘hate’, due to its conceptually ambiguous nature, can subjectively mean different things to different people. Yet, when it serves to fuel and aggregate the discursive practices of nascent online communities, it is usually directed towards already stigmatised/marginalised groups (Banks 2010; Citron/Norton 2011) and often succeeds in simultaneously affirming the hegemonic stance of the perpetrators and the subordinate identity of the victims (Kopytowska 2015; Hardaker/McGlashan 2016; Kopytowska/Baider 2017; Chiaro 2018). Although the intrinsic virality and multivocal nature of web-based language, especially of the kind displayed across micro-blogging sites, such as Twitter, may foster positive gregarious activities (see Zappavigna 2014b; Harju 2016; Döveling/Harju/Sommer 2018), the sense of disinhibition and de-responsabilization born of anonymity can often lead to “the spread of mob dynamics and mob mentality, resulting in an ever-escalating competition to attack people online because of their perceived difference” (KhosraviNik/Esposito 2018: 48). Against this backdrop, the aim of this study is to identify the manner in which Twitter prosumers (Ritzer/Jurgenson 2010) commune and affiliate around the theme of ‘body image’ by morphosyntactically shaming and humiliating those who are considered overweight. Perhaps more interestingly, this study will also investigate the way in which a number of individuals express their need to belong to the group of perpetrators (as opposed to victims) by crafting self-denigratory fat-shaming statements while emulating other-denigrating linguistic patterns. A number of hashtags – which stand as a higher order of linguistic abstraction (Zappavigna 2018) – reflecting strongly critical attitudes towards ‘fat’ individuals/bodies will be investigated over a two-year time span (2018 – 2020) in order to collect sufficient data to stand as representative of the kind of linguistic phenomenon under investigation, and to observe the patterns of increase/decrease of specific online ‘othering’ linguistic mechanisms. In terms of methodology, this chapter will adopt a corpus-based approach (Baker 2006, 2014; McEnery et al. 2006; McEnery/Hardie 2012) to investigate the meta-discursive data extrapolated from the corpus under scrutiny, in order to trace recurrent morphosyntactic patterns employed in the construction of online body-shaming discourses. One such pattern appears to be the reiteration of specialized lexicon accompanied by experiential verbs when denigrating fat people, as a form of epistemic stance adopted by the shamers to couch their offences in pseudo-legitimate medical/institutional language.
Fat chance! Digital critical discourse studies on discrimination against fat people
B. Hughes
2020-01-01
Abstract
The term ‘hate’, due to its conceptually ambiguous nature, can subjectively mean different things to different people. Yet, when it serves to fuel and aggregate the discursive practices of nascent online communities, it is usually directed towards already stigmatised/marginalised groups (Banks 2010; Citron/Norton 2011) and often succeeds in simultaneously affirming the hegemonic stance of the perpetrators and the subordinate identity of the victims (Kopytowska 2015; Hardaker/McGlashan 2016; Kopytowska/Baider 2017; Chiaro 2018). Although the intrinsic virality and multivocal nature of web-based language, especially of the kind displayed across micro-blogging sites, such as Twitter, may foster positive gregarious activities (see Zappavigna 2014b; Harju 2016; Döveling/Harju/Sommer 2018), the sense of disinhibition and de-responsabilization born of anonymity can often lead to “the spread of mob dynamics and mob mentality, resulting in an ever-escalating competition to attack people online because of their perceived difference” (KhosraviNik/Esposito 2018: 48). Against this backdrop, the aim of this study is to identify the manner in which Twitter prosumers (Ritzer/Jurgenson 2010) commune and affiliate around the theme of ‘body image’ by morphosyntactically shaming and humiliating those who are considered overweight. Perhaps more interestingly, this study will also investigate the way in which a number of individuals express their need to belong to the group of perpetrators (as opposed to victims) by crafting self-denigratory fat-shaming statements while emulating other-denigrating linguistic patterns. A number of hashtags – which stand as a higher order of linguistic abstraction (Zappavigna 2018) – reflecting strongly critical attitudes towards ‘fat’ individuals/bodies will be investigated over a two-year time span (2018 – 2020) in order to collect sufficient data to stand as representative of the kind of linguistic phenomenon under investigation, and to observe the patterns of increase/decrease of specific online ‘othering’ linguistic mechanisms. In terms of methodology, this chapter will adopt a corpus-based approach (Baker 2006, 2014; McEnery et al. 2006; McEnery/Hardie 2012) to investigate the meta-discursive data extrapolated from the corpus under scrutiny, in order to trace recurrent morphosyntactic patterns employed in the construction of online body-shaming discourses. One such pattern appears to be the reiteration of specialized lexicon accompanied by experiential verbs when denigrating fat people, as a form of epistemic stance adopted by the shamers to couch their offences in pseudo-legitimate medical/institutional language.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
