INSTAGRAM, EMOTION AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMICS – AN ANALYSIS OF (IN)FERTILITY POSTS
Resumo
The paper explores the linguistic realization of posters created to assist patients during fertility treatments amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. It analyzes data from a previous study on emotional content posts on an infertility clinic Instagram profile, using insights from Systemic Functional Linguistic (Halliday, 2004) and exploring stance and engagement in the interpersonal metafunction (Hyland, 2005; Luzón, 2023). The study also examines Instagram metrics data. Data comes from posts publicly posted throughout the first two years of pandemics. The analysis of posts revealed that the author used various resources to express stance, including positive adjectives, nouns, emotional reactions, and expression of gratitude. Emojis were also used to convey positive attitude. The language used in these posts was essentially positive, connecting with readers in a reassuring and confident way. Engagement was achieved through attention-getting resources like images, questions, inclusive we, and second person pronouns. Directives were also found in the captions and images, generating high frequency of views and interactions. These features may have contributed to the engagement of the posts. Instagram metrics showed that emotional content posts got significant more likes and shares when compared to educational ones.
