#ILookLikeASurgeon: stance and engagement on Twitter/X for identity construction and community building

• Luzón, María José ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de Zaragoza

     Universidad de Zaragoza

     Zaragoza, España

     
• Localización: Círculo de lingüística aplicada a la comunicación, ISSN-e 1576-4737, Nº. 106, 2026 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Modelo de una edición crítica digital de la duodécima edición del Diccionario de la lengua castellana de la Real Academia Española (DRAE 1884), coordinado por Gloria Clavería (UAB), Margarita Freixas (UAB) y Esther Hernández (Instituto de Lengua, Literatura y Antropología, CSIC)), págs. 267-279
• Idioma: español
• DOI: 10.5209/clac.95615
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

       

  • English

    The hashtag #ILookLikeASurgeon, introduced in August 2015, is still being used to highlight diversity in surgery, challenge stereotypes and fight discrimination. Adopting a multimodal approach, this study analyzes a corpus of 150 tweets with the hashtag #ILookLikeASurgeon, in order to explore the role played by stance and engagement devices in (collective) identity construction and community building. The analysis reveals that a variety of stance and engagement resources are used to project a more inclusive identity of medical professionals (especially surgeons), build solidarity and create a sense of community. Stance and engagement are expressed in these tweets by linguistic resources (e.g. personal pronouns, directives), but also by other resources afforded by the digital medium (e.g. images, emoji, hashtags). The images posted by female surgeon, in particular, play a crucial role in constructing identity and community. The study shows how the semiotic resources analyzed are orchestrated strategically in these tweets to challenge gender stereotypes in surgery and fight gender bias.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • Alfano, Mark, Reimann, Ritsaart, Quintana, Ignacio, Chan, Anastasia, Cheong, Marc and Klein, Colin. (2022). The affiliative use of emoji and...
  • Barker-Plummer, Bernadette and Barker-Plummer, Dave. (2017). Twitter as a feminist resource: #YesAllWomen, digital platforms, and discursive...
  • Barton, David and Lee, Carmen. (2013). Language online: Investigating digital texts and practices. New York: Routledge.
  • Bezemer, Jeff A. and Kress, Gunther. (2008). Writing in multimodal texts: a social semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication,...
  • Bouvier, Gwen and Machin, David. (2021). What gets lost in Twitter ‘cancel culture’ hashtags? Calling out racists reveals some limitations...
  • Brantner, Cornelia, Lobinger, Katharina and Stehling, Miriam. (2020). Memes against sexism? A multi-method analysis of the feminist protest...
  • British Psychological Society (BPS) (2009) Code of Ethics and Conduct. Leicester: BPS.
  • Chiluwa, Innocent and Ifukor, Presley. (2015). ‘War against our Children’: Stance and evaluation in #BringBackOurGirls campaign discourse...
  • Clark, Rosemary. (2016). “Hope in a hashtag”: the discursive activism of #WhyIStayed. Feminist Media Studies, 16(5), 788-804, doi: 10.1080/14680777.2016.1138235
  • De Cock, Barbara and Pizarro-Pedraza, Andrea. (2018). From expressing solidarity to mocking on Twitter: Pragmatic functions of hashtags starting...
  • Du Bois, John. (2007). The stance triangle. Robert Englebretson (Ed.). Stance-taking in Discourse (pp. 139-182). John Benjamins Publishing....
  • De Fina, Anna, Schiffrin, Deborah and Bamberg, Michael. (Eds.). (2006). Discourse and Identity. Cambridge University Press.
  • Ess, Charles and the AoIR ethics working committee (2002). Ethical decision-making and Internet Research: Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics...
  • Evans, Ash. (2016). Stance and identity in Twitter hashtags. Language@Internet, 13(1): 1-16.
  • Georgalou, Mariza. (2017). Discourse and identity on Facebook: How we use language and multimodality to present identity online. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Giaxoglou, Karina. (2018). #JeSuisCharlie? Hashtags as narrative resources in contexts of ecstatic sharing. Discourse, Context, and Media,...
  • Gruber, Helmut. (2017). Quoting and retweeting as communicative practices in computer mediated discourse. Discourse, Context and Media, 20,...
  • Hyland, Ken. (2005). Metadiscourse. London: Continuum.
  • Kress, Gunther and van Leeuwen, Theo. (2001). Multimodal discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold.
  • Kim, Jinsook. (2017). #iamafeminist as the “Mother Tag”: Feminist identification and activism against misogyny on Twitter in South Korea....
  • Kreis, Ramona. (2017). #refugeesnotwelcome: Anti-refugee discourse on Twitter. Discourse & Communication, 11(5), 498-514. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481317714121
  • Luzón, María-José. (2018). Constructing academic identities online: Identity performance in research group blogs written by multilingual scholars....
  • Luzón, María-José. (2023). Multimodal practices of research groups in Twitter: An analysis of stance and engagement. English for Specific...
  • Martin, J. R. and White, P. R. (2005). The Language of Evaluation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Marino, Francesca. (2023). #Twospirit: Identity construction through stance-taking on TikTok. Discourse. Context & Media, 54. doi: 10.1016/j.dcm.2023.100711.
  • Matley, David. (2018). “Let’s see how many of you mother fuckers unfollow me for this”: the pragmatic function of the hashtag #sorrynotsorry...
  • Morikawa, Eleanor (2019). #YesAllWomen’s language: Women’s style shifting in feminist discourse on Twitter. Discourse, Context & Media,...
  • Page, Ruth, Barton, David, Unger, Johann and Zappavigna, Michele. (2014). Researching Language and Social Media: A Student Guide. Hoboken,...
  • Palomino-Manjón, Patricia. (2020). Feminist activism on Twitter: The discursive construction of sexual violence and victim-survivors in #WhyIDidntReport....
  • Papacharissi, Zizi. (2016). Affective publics and structures of storytelling: sentiment, events and mediality. Information, Communication...
  • Pfurtscheller, Daniel. (2020). More than recycled snippets of news: Quote cards as recontextualized discourse on social media. AILA Review,...
  • Suau-Jiménez, Francisca, Lorés-Sanz, Rosa, Mapelli, Giovanna and Herrando-Rodrigo, Isabel. (2021). La interpersonalidad discursiva como alternativa...
  • Suau-Jiménez, Francisca and Ivorra-Pérez, Francisco. (2023). Dialogicidad intencionada y co-creación de la persuasión en Instagram. Cuadernos...
  • Suau-Jiménez, Francisca and Yus, Francisco (2024, April 17-19). Emojis as a tool to show users’ engagement towards promotional content on...
  • Tsou, Andrew, Bowman, Timothy, Sugimoto, Thomas, Lariviere, Vincent and Sugimoto, Cassidy. (2016). Self-presentation in scholarly profiles:...
  • Yus, Francisco. (2019, October 14-18). Emoji: A full cyberpragmatic approach. 16th China Pragmatics Conference, Nanchang, China.
  • Zappavigna, Michele. (2012). Discourse of Twitter and social media: How we use language to create affiliation on the web. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Zappavigna, Michele. (2015). Searchable talk: the linguistic functions of hashtags. Social Semiotics, 25(3), 274-291. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2014.996948