"Good Things Happen When I'm Starving": A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis of the Tumblr Pro-Anorexia Community.

Abstract

The rise of pro-anorexia communities is a peculiar new phenomenon which has been observed on most social media platforms since their onset in the early 2000s. Pro-anorexia communities are digital niches which function as safe spaces for individuals suffering from anorexia nervosa, who are otherwise exposed to widespread stigmatisation in their daily lives due to their condition. Since the beginning of the pro-anorexia phenomenon, countless communities of anorexic individuals have formed on different social media platforms, each characterised by its own unique features. The present work provides a detailed account of the main discursive characteristics of the pro-anorexia community on Tumblr. Over the course of a month, all 1,228 textposts in English published on this social network under the pro-anorexia hashtag were compiled into a corpus. The characteristics of the aforementioned collection of naturally occurring language were subsequently analysed by means of an array of Corpus Linguistics tools, thus providing a quantitative overview of the language used by pro-anorexia bloggers on Tumblr. A sample of 34 textposts was further examined by relying on Critical Discourse Analysis techniques. Numerous recurring discursive patterns were identified throughout this research, primarily revolving around the thematic areas of food, physical appearance, outgroup individuals, and ingroup relationships. Both the most frequent and the most salient linguistic items pertaining to these topics were thus identified and further analysed with reference to their collocational profile within the corpus. This work documents the linguistic strategies through which anorexic individuals partake in discourse within the Tumblr pro-anorexia community in order to collectively conceptualise and give sense to their daily experiences with the eating disorder, thus challenging the historically consolidated characterisation of anorexia nervosa as an exclusively individual and isolating psychopathology.