Angela Zottola - Böcker

This Element focuses on the linguistic and discursive practices employed by digital citizens to promote their causes on social media, that is to engage in digital activism, drawing attention to the growing importance of this phenomenon in relation to gender identity and sexuality issues. I propose the label LGBTQ+ Digital Activism to join the already existing one Feminist Digital Activism and argue that, while these have been areas of interest from sociology and communication specialists, digital activism is still to be embraced as a field of research by applied linguists. I point out to a number of linguistic and discursive features that are popular among digital activists and support this through the analysis of the use of the hashtag #wontbeerased combining Social Media Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies. I suggest that further research is needed to explore how language is used to propagate and popularize emancipatory discourses online.

This Element focuses on the linguistic and discursive practices employed by digital citizens to promote their causes on social media, that is to engage in digital activism, drawing attention to the growing importance of this phenomenon in relation to gender identity and sexuality issues. I propose the label LGBTQ+ Digital Activism to join the already existing one Feminist Digital Activism and argue that, while these have been areas of interest from sociology and communication specialists, digital activism is still to be embraced as a field of research by applied linguists. I point out to a number of linguistic and discursive features that are popular among digital activists and support this through the analysis of the use of the hashtag #wontbeerased combining Social Media Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies. I suggest that further research is needed to explore how language is used to propagate and popularize emancipatory discourses online.

Winner of the PROSE Award (2022) for Language & LinguisticsFor many people, newspapers are a key source of information on many topics, including issues related to gender and sexuality. Applying a broad range of corpus linguistic methods, Transgender Identities in the Press critically explores the linguistic cues and patterns used by the print media in their representation of trans people. Through close analysis of a corpus of articles collected from English-language newspapers from the UK and Canada, Angela Zottola focuses on the semantic categories of representation associated with transgender identities. Exploring a set of key terms, this book examines the semantic prosody and the language choices that each term is invested with, using Critical Discourse Analysis to investigate how the way the press represents this topic influences readers and their understanding of the major debates. Using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods, Transgender Identities in the Press casts light on the complex picture of press language during a period of social change and increasing awareness. Highlighting both efforts to represent this community in an inclusive and non-discriminatory way and areas where there is need for improvement, this book illustrates a variety of issues from a critical and social perspective.