Panel organisers:
Michael Wentker (Bielefeld University): michael.wentker@uni-bielefeld.de
Carolin Schneider (Utrecht University): c.schneider@uu.nl
Birte Bös (University of Duisburg-Essen): birte.boes@uni-due.de
Emotions and their expression are a core component of human experience and interaction. It is therefore hardly surprising that they have captured the interest of researchers from a broad range of disciplines including anthropology, psychology, sociology, linguistics and many others. This panel aims to serve as a platform for state-of-the-art emotion research exploring textual and multimodal manifestations of emotions and processes of emotionalization in digital discourses. The digital realm has not only opened up a broad array of new platforms, modes and genres where emotions can be expressed via a multitude of semiotic resources, it has also blurred the boundaries between private and public. Subjective feelings of anonymity and intimacy often encourage private disclosure, and digital Communities of Practice emerge as participants bond over multi-faceted emotional experiences. Emotionalization strategies can also be used as ‘click bait’ by content creators to pursue societal or interpersonal aims in specific target audiences. This panel thus focuses on the linguistic and other semiotic resources and interpersonal functions of emotions in digital settings, their mutual negotiation among homo- or heterogeneous audiences from diverse cultures, and the research methodologies with which these are examined in current research.
This panel considers any of the following and/or related aspects:
- • inventory of semiotic resources of expressing emotions and their interplay in the digital realm
- • language about and language as emotion (i.e., 'emotion talk' and 'emotional talk')
- • metapragmatic negotiations of expressions of emotions
- • universality or cultural specificity of emotions in digital discourses
- • role of lived emotional experience and self-disclosure in digital settings
- • socio-technical affordances of digital modes and their impact on the expression of emotions
- • methodological approaches in emotion research on digital data
