earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is 1) to examine the types of tweets including #patient31 and evaluative language use of the tweets within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Appraisal Framework, and Critical Discourse Analysis; and 2) to show how the shared evaluation for patient31 represents her negatively and even reinforces the fixed image of ‘a reckless, irresponsible super spreader of virus.’ 101 tweets including the hashtag ‘#patient31’ were scraped randomly. The findings revealed that the hashtag and its linguistic use served both ideational function and interpersonal function. Communicating their evaluation for patient31, users shared their opinions, emotions, and lastly, built solidarity, and even ambient affiliation. The mutual consent to the evaluation or meaning-making process is realized in the phrase ‘don’t be patient31.’ However, there was a voice warning that this kind of meaning-making became cyberbullying toward an infected person. This study found that it is worth analyzing the language of SNS to show its multifunction rather than just its informational role.