Emotion, discourse, and linguistic diversity: Emotions in grammar and discourse in northern Australia

This paper explores the meaning of really polar questions and wh-the hell questions in TED talks as compared with MICASE. The meaning of questions is generally defined in relation to their answers. Questions are assumed to request information in conversation exchange (Sadock and Zwicky 1985). An answer is supposed to fill an epistemic gap. The paper investigates the role of questions in a discourse context where no information can be obtained from the addressee. The nature of responses is analysed. 
Epistemic really in a positive polar question triggers an epistemic bias of opposite polarity. As a verum operator, really adds the negative implicature that the speaker expected the negative answer to be true. The speaker ""asks for conclusive evidence for p"" (Romero and Han 2004), so as to get a confirmation of their original belief. This confirmation cannot be obtained in TED talks. We show that really questions serve to dispel commonly held beliefs by allowing the speaker to introduce conclusive evidence for not-p in the subsequent discourse and to steer the common ground to a new knowledge state. This discursive function of really polar questions is salient in TED talks as opposed to MICASE.
In content questions, the the hell phrase also conveys a negative implicature, i.e. ""the speaker's negative attitude toward the content of the question"" (den Dikken and Giannakidou 2002). The hell conveys two types of expressivity (Celle, Jugnet, and Lansari 2021) that derive from intensification. Emotional expressivity correlates with the speaker's attitude to p, which may rank high either along a scale of ignorance or incongruity. Iconic expressivity enacts emotion when a scale of performativity is involved. It is mostly associated with storytelling sequences inserted in the narrative. Both types of expressivity are attested in TED talks.
 In sum, really questions and wh-the hell questions contribute to achieving joint attention (Battich & Geurts (2020) in the knowledge-sharing process based  by arousing the addressee's interest. The disconfirmation of prior expectations is intended to create an anticipation on the part of the addressee.

Negative bias in questions in TED talks

In 1950, Akira Kurosawa directed a movie entitled “Rashomon”, depicting contradicting viewpoints of a single death event. In this study we argue that the Rashomon effect hypothesis can increase our understanding of the role emotions play in knowledge-building communication. Our goal is to understand the gaps between emotional intentions and the emotional interpretations of other participants, and their relation to civic conversations. Additionally, we explore the intersubjective ways in which recognition of expressions of emotions are made in digital, written, contentious conversations. Findings from this study offer new insights into the emotional components, expressive, and interpretive practice in such conversations and reemphasize the value and challenges of understanding emotional presence in digital discussions on civic issues.

Emotion recognition in digital discussions and civic learning processes

As is known, “[t]he word “nostalgia” comes from two Greek roots: νόστος, nóstos (“return home”) and ἄλγος, álgos (“longing”) (Boym, 2001). The word was invented in the 17th century by Johannes Hofer and soon it became very popular.
Nostalgia is an ambiguous phenomenon: it could be seen negatively, as it “fuelled populism and nationalist identity politics” (Menke, Schwarzenegger, 2016: 2), or “as a creative and progressive resource, a tool for commodification, or an agent for identity and community building to articulate cultural or generational belonging” (ibid., p. 2). Nostalgia may be seen also as an emotion. According to Havlena and Holak (1991: 323), it refers back to an earlier period in the individual's life and draws on biased or selective recall of past experiences. Nostalgia may be described as ""a painful yearning to return home” and it is broadly used in advertising, marketing and PR.
It is not only a manipulative technique, which is popular among PR specialists, politicians, journalists, etc. Nostalgia is also a means of overcoming the psychological consequences of the isolation, anxiety and trauma during the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in Bulgaria since March 2020 because of its potential to bond with others (Niemeyer, Wentz, 2014: 129), to increase optimism and to mobilise people for action (FioRito and Routledge, 2020).
The aim of the study is to present nostalgia as a strategy for dealing with the state of emergency at the time of the first lockdown in Bulgaria during the COVID-19 crisis when nostalgic winds, memories of the past and literary reminiscences proved to be a successful strategy for dealing with physical isolation. The research questions include 1) a presentation of the nostalgic modes in Facebook and Twitter and a thematic classification of the initiatives, communication strategies and topics in the public space, oriented towards the past; 2) a quantitative analysis within the classified groups aiming to reveal the most frequent model; 3) revealing the reasons for their success as communicative and social messages through their meaning in social media during the emergency situation.
In order to achieve the above goals, a set of methods and approaches is used in the analysis and classification, as well as in the explanation of the reasons for the nostalgic convertibility in the public space, especially intensified during the COVID-19 crisis. Such a complicated phenomenon insists on using an interdisciplinary approach, especially the apparatuses of discourse analysis and content analysis. To investigate the cultural shaping of the nostalgic posts, to explain their social use in an emergency situation and to conceptualize the research data the multimodal analysis theories are also applied (Jovanovic, van Leeuwen, 2018, Ben Moussa et al., 2020, etc.).
The data includes public posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter), published in the period from 15.03.2020, when the state of emergency in connection with COVID-19 was declared in Bulgaria, until 13.05.2020, when it was terminated. We have collected multimodal posts with a nostalgic nuance, representing the longing for the previous lifestyle. We divide them into thematic groups, including historical memories, personal memories, nostalgic games, literary reminiscences, etc. A quantitative analysis within the groups is made aiming to reveal the most frequent model. As the combinations between different groups have been observed they are also presented.  We discuss as well the linguistic and visual characteristics of these messages to find the reasons for their popularity.
The results so far indicate that nostalgia through its diverse manifestation on social media manages to unite people in the presence of physical isolation, to remind them of past experiences and thus to save them from emotional stress which the COVID-19 constrictions and fears may cause. Social media and modern technologies make it possible to create new products based on old, forgotten stories or memories that live a new meaningful life in the specific COVID-19 situation.

References: 
Ben Moussa, M., Benmessaoud, S., Douai, A. (2020) Internet memes as “tactical” social action: A multimodal critical discourse analysis approach. International Journal of Communication, 14, 5920–5940. 
Boym, Sv. (2001) Adoptation and elaboration from Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, Basic Books, NY 2001. Retrieved July 15, 2021, from: http://monumenttotransformation.org/atlas-of-transformation/html/n/nostalgia/nostalgia-svetlana-boym.html
FioRito, TA, Routledge, C. (2020) Is nostalgia a past or future-oriented experience? Affective, behavioral, social cognitive, and neuroscientific evidence. Front. Psychol, 11, 1133. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01133
Havlena, W., Holak, S. (1991) “The Good Old Days”: Observations on nostalgia and its role in consumer behavior. In R. Holman, M. Solomon, (eds.). NA - Advances in Consumer Research (Vol. 18, pp.323–329). Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research. 
Jovanovic, D., van Leeuwen, T. (2018) Multimodal dialogue on social media, Social Semiotics, 28:5, 683–699, DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2018.1504732
Menke, M., Schwarzenegger, C. (2016) Media, communication and nostalgia. Finding a better tomorrow in the yesterday? Editorial. Medien & Zeit, 4, 2–5.
Niemeyer, K., Wentz, D. (2014) Nostalgia is not what it used to be: serial nostalgia and nostalgic television series. In: Niemeyer, K. (ed). Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, the Present and the Future (pp. 129–138). London: Palgrave McMillan.


Nostalgia as a means of dealing with emotional challenges during the first part of the COVID-19 crisis in Bulgaria Cultural Studies

If countless researchers in the most disparate fields have been investigating Covid-19 from different perspectives, that is because it brought about one of the biggest societal revolution of the 21st century. Through lockdown restrictions, curfews and social distancing, not only it compromised our daily lives, but also the economy and communication sectors at large. In order to contribute to the understanding of this global phenomenon, this research tries to analyse how Covid impacted the advertising industry in the UK by analysing from a multimodal and social semiotic perspective the #StayHomeHeroes digital ad and hashtag created by Iris and the Heroes charity to economically support the NHS in the fight against Covid-19. This presentation raises three points: how both Covid and the media revolution changed societies and communication; the emotional challenges that Covid brought about and the linguistic and semiotic manifestations of this sensitive time, all through a focus on advertising.

#StayHomeHeroes: Hilarious yet bonding print advertising strategies to fight against COVID-19

This paper takes shape from the debate on the role of human rights in maternity care, following several emerging cases of obstetric violence and aggressive and intolerant treatment permeating care during labour and delivery (Freedman et al. 2014). In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement directed at preventing and eliminating disrespectful, non-dignified and abusive behaviour by health professionals during childbirth, highlighting a physical as well as emotional and psychological violence. Early in 2019, a UN report warned against obstetric violence as being still widespread and systematic in nature, acknowledging it has not been fully addressed from a human rights perspective so far.
Despite the fact that the phenomenon is gaining increasing recognition worldwide and at institutional level, there seems to be a lack of theoretical engagement on the issue (Dixon 2015). This study, therefore, explores how women’s experiences are discursively construed, specifically taking into account the stories shared on social media in English-speaking contexts (Canada, the US, the UK)—more specifically, on the websites of charities and advocacy groups, such as the Obstetric Justice Project, Birth Monopoly, Birth Trauma Association, working to expose obstetric violence and raise awareness on the issue. Indeed, social media are being increasingly used as a platform for exchanging views, writing testimonies, thus creating a (safe) site for the production of meanings. In contrast with the current little academic and scientific attention, birth stories have become increasingly common on the Internet, providing detailed descriptions of emotions, psychological states, decisions, relationships. Especially after traumatic experiences, mothers/parents seek healing by speaking up, writing, telling their stories, for a wide range of complex motivations: as a way to re-work the trauma, disrupt and resist against surveillance and abuse of their choices and bodies, re-negotiate power after a disempowering medical experience, unburden themselves, find relief. While projecting the image of suffering bodies in labour facing abuse, humiliation and unconsented medical procedures in what should be, instead, an intimate and joyful moment, these narratives allow a critical thought on practices of discrimination which heavily affect women’s agency and act like a prism reflecting dominant dynamics in society. As some critics have noted (Wolf 2013; Cohen Shabot 2016), obstetric violence is different from other forms of medical violence because labouring/birthing bodies are suffering, unruly and noisy, but they are not ill. They face a structural kind of gender violence, a form of subtler normative oppression aiming at a diminishment of women’s agency, which forces them in the cycle of silence and shame precluding social change and political action.
The stories shared online (and collected over a time-span raging from 2018 to 2020) are analysed following Halliday’s (1981, 1985, 2001) systemic functional approach to discourse, which theorises language as a systemic resource for meaning-making, in combination with a feminist post-structuralist theoretical framework influenced by Michel Foucault’s work (Foucault 1977, 1980, 1989; Butler 1990; Grosz 1994; Allen 2014). Additionally drawing on a discourse analysis perspective, the article investigates emerging and recurrent patterns and themes in women’s narratives, questioning not merely power dynamics in the health-care system during childbirth but also existing power relations in society. In particular, the article addresses three research questions: 1) how women’s emotion patterns and states are discursively construed; 2) what are the most recurrent plot units or topics through which the phenomenon of obstetric violence is framed; 3) what are the underlying questions of power and gender relations and to what extent these dynamics of abuse convey covert forms of subjugation enacting practices of discrimination which represent the expression of historical, social and cultural values that are buried and disguised in the naturalised order of things. 

Bibliographic references

Allen, Amy. “Feminist Perspectives on Power.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Phylosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2014. plato.stanford.edu/entries/feministpower/.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.
Cohen Shabot, Sara. “Making Loud Bodies ‘Feminine’: A Feminist-Phenomenological Analysis of Obstetric Violence.” Human Studies, vol. 39, no. 2, 2016, pp. 1-17.
Dixon, Lydia. “Obstetrics in a Time of Violence.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, vol. 29, 2015, pp. 437-454.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Penguin Books, 1977.
---. “Body/Power.” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, edited by Colin Gordon, translated by Colin Gordon, Pantheon, 1980, pp. 55-62.
---. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Routledge, 1989.
Freedman, Lynn, et al. “Defining Disrespect and Abuse of Women in Childbirth.” Bulletin of World Health Organization, no. 92, 2014, pp. 915-17.
Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indiana UP, 1994.
Halliday, M.A.K. Explorations in the Function of Language. Edward Arnold, 1981.
---. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Edward Arnold, 1985.
---. “On the Grammatical Foundations of Discourse.” Grammar and Discourse: Proceedings of the International Conference on Discourse Analysis, edited by Ren Shaozeng et al., University of Macau Publication Centre, 2001, pp. 47-57.
Wolf, Allison B. “Metaphysical Violence and Medicalised Childbirth.” International Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 27, no.1, 2013, pp. 101-11.

Voicing labouring bodies: women's narratives and gender violence

This study investigates the use of gender-inclusive language among Italian non-binary individuals. In English-speaking countries, the epicene pronoun ‘they’ and neo-pronouns such as ‘xe’ and ‘zim’ have been adopted by non-binary individuals and LGBTQA+ allies alike. In this debate, Romance languages are a very interesting case, since they are inflectional languages characterised by gender markers for all variable parts of speech. In Italy, activists are trying to spread language awareness to dismantle gender discrimination conveyed through language. Projects such as ‘Italiano Inclusivo’, ‘Progetto Genderqueer’, and scholars such as Gheno (2019a and 2019b) are involved in the analysis and promotion of inclusive language, while one of the most important research institutions, the Accademia della Crusca (2020), refuses to accept any alternative. It is against this background that this study analyses the state of the use of inclusive language among the Italian non-binary community. Through a survey submitted to several Italian LGBTQA+ online groups, the study investigates non-binary individuals’ preferred pronouns, their selection of suffixes when writing or speaking about themselves or other non-binary individuals, how they refer to a group of mixed binary and non-binary people, and further proposals of inclusive forms. Gender-inclusive language is more than a matter of political correctness. Understanding the mechanisms behind its use is important because interpersonal communication contributes to gender stereotyping and misgendering. 

Gender-inclusive language among Italian non-binary individuals: a survey

After being accused of sexual assault in 2018, judge Kavanaugh received support from Donald Trump who offered him his sympathy as he explained “I feel so badly for him. This is not a man who deserves this”. This kind of inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of misogynistic behaviour is what the philosopher Kate Manne (2017, 2018) calls himpathy. English gendered neologisms naming undesirable heterosexual/cis/male behaviours have accompanied accounts of sexual and sexist violence from the last few years, amplified by social media and the #MeToo movement. As for these stories, these neologisms aim at raising awareness by making the designated behaviours more visible.
A similar linguistic phenomenon occurred in the 1970s with the emergence of feminist linguistics. Based on the observation of the androcentric nature of language, feminists suggested strategies to counter this male bias, among which: (i) neutral or feminised forms to replace male generics (e.g. fire fighter instead of fireman), also known as “gender-fair language”, and (ii) linguistic innovations to name experiences from women’s perspective (e.g. sexual harassment; Spender 1990: 182–190). While there is a large body of language and gender research on the former, the latter has received little attention.
Among the few studies, Ehrlich and King (1994) show how these linguistic innovations lost their intended feminist meanings as they became institutionalised. The authors identify strategies depoliticising these forms, such as the expansion of the definition arguing that it is originally the feminist meaning in order to ridicule the phenomenon. For example, sexual abuse is redefined as overhearing a sibling discussing sexual experimentation. The authors (1994: 73) argue: “while feminist and nonsexist linguistic innovations […] attempt to reshape the dominant social structures and attitudes, they are at the same time being shaped by these very structures”. In their study, the social structure reshaping these meanings is the press media defined as a “dominant elite” (1994: 65) in which they observe the linguistic innovations. The reappropriation of feminist-driven language change has also been observed for gender-fair forms (Baker 2010, Pauwels 2003).
The linguistic innovations from the 1970s and the recent English gendered neologisms share the same motives – increasing the visibility of specific behaviours through names. However, Ehrlich and King’s (1994) findings seem to suggest that this is a lost cause. To become more visible, these neologisms have to be used outside of the linguistic community from which they originated. In other words, they have to be diffused. Yet, their study shows that a higher degree of diffusion means a higher risk of losing the intended feminist meaning.
Drawing from these results, this paper presents a sociopragmatic analysis (Schmid 2016: 82) of English gendered neologisms naming undesirable heterosexual/cis/male behaviours coined in the current feminist movement. The study is guided by the following questions: (i) what is the degree of diffusion of the recent English gendered neologisms naming undesirable heterosexual/cis/male behaviours? and (ii) did their intended feminist meaning change as they became diffused and does it differ depending on the type of source in which they occur? The neologisms will be analysed adopting a quantitative and qualitative corpus-based approach
using the NOW (News on the Web) corpus. More specifically, the degree of diffusion will be measured in terms of frequency, number of countries in which a neologism occurs, types of sources (i.e. is it in a journal specialised in gender matters or in general media?), and domains (i.e. the topic of the article). As mentioned above, Ehrlich and King’s (1994) findings are based on the study of innovations in the press media defined as a “dominant elite”. The digital nature of the NOW corpus offers a diversity of sources as it contains web-based newspapers and magazines from 20 countries since 2010. Both mainstream media such as The Guardian or The New York Times, and alternative media such as Big Gay Picture Show and Feminism in India are present in the corpus. This diversity will not only be used to observe whether a neologism is used outside of the linguistic community in which it originated but also to compare usage throughout source types. The media plurality is essential to provide a comprehensive account of the usage of these gendered neologisms.

References
Baker, P. (2010). Will Ms ever be as frequent as Mr? A corpus-based comparison of gendered terms across four diachronic corpora of British English. Gender and Language, 4(1), 125–149.
Ehrlich, S., & King, R. (1994). Feminist meanings and the (de)politicization of the lexicon. Language in Society, 23(1), 59–76.
Manne, K. (2018, September 26). Brett Kavanaugh and America’s ‘himpathy’ reckoning. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/opinion/brett-kavanaugh-hearing-himpathy.html; accessed 20/03/2021
Manne, K. (2017). Down girl: The logic of misogyny. Oxford University Press.
Pauwels, A. (2003). Linguistic sexism and feminist linguistic activism. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff (Eds.), The Handbook of Language and Gender (pp. 550–570). Wiley-Blackwell.
Schmid, H-J. (2016 [2005]). English morphology and word-formation: An introduction (3rd ed.). Erich Schmidt.
Spender, D. (1990 [1980]). Man made language (2nd ed.). Pandora Press.
Corpus
Davies, M. (2016-). Corpus of News on the Web (NOW). https://www.english-corpora.org/now/

Naming experiences in the current feminist movement: a sociopragmatic study of English gendered neologisms

Background
Although there is no proof that older people become infected by SARS-CoV-2 more than younger people do (WHO 2020), “[e]xisting literature suggests that age is an important predictor of poor outcomes among patients with COVID-19” (Mills, Kaye, Mody 2020: 1). This leads to older adults (globally agreed upon as people aged 60 years and older, WHO 2018) having converted into an even more vulnerable social group during the 2019- global pandemic. To the physical and psychological fragilities connected with ageing, an entire new set of issues has indeed added itself to their conditions, as the virus impacted on this population harder. One such problematic aspect is the economic disadvantage at which high numbers of seniors have found themselves to be, for instance in the United States of America, “according to estimates from the Elder Index, a county-level measure of the income needed by older adults to meet basic needs” (Li, Mutchler 2020: 478). Nursing homes and long-term care institutions, by definition inhabited by elderly citizens, also contributed to making them subject to early, sudden and repeated outbreaks of the disease (Chen, Chevalier, Long 2021). Yet another demographic datum is that the older population that was either killed or severely affected, at various levels, by COVID-19 was mostly represented by women (Peterman et. al. 2020). 

Aims and methods
Whether female seniors fell victim to the pandemic more than their male counterparts due to force majeure, since women over 60 are a statistically larger group than men (UN 2019), is one of the research questions this study intends to address. Another thesis will be explored, though, according to which “COVID-19 has exacerbated issues that already left older women at a significant disadvantage compared to men” (Zycher 2020). In order to investigate and evaluate the two differing positions, a discursive analysis of information about older females who have been and are being affected by the pandemic will be carried out. The depictions and representations of this specific social group shall be reconstructed and compared against hard data, from a perspective that definitely stems from Critical Discourse Studies (e.g. Wodak, Meyer 2015; Flowerdew, Richardson 2018), but will not hesitate to delve into research from other fields such as economics, sociology, health(care) and medicine, statistics and more, whenever necessary. Studies on ageing and (female) gender (e.g. Ylänne 2012, Anderson 2019) will necessarily also be consulted. 

Material
The relationship between older women and COVID-19 will be explored in English-language a) academic research; b) texts authored, edited, published, distributed or ultimately endorsed by governmental and supra-governmental organisations (the US, the UK and other English-speaking developed countries, the EU, the WHO, etc.); c) mass media news, when reporting data and information stemming from a) and b). Due to the ample variety of text types and genres considered, and to the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic at the time of writing is far from over, though it has entered the mass vaccination phase in early 2021, the texts for analysis are expected to be collected and thus scrutinised following quality- more than quantity-based criteria. 

Expected results and relevance
The research behind this proposal is currently work-in-progress. Results are expected to contribute, firstly, to ageing studies, at the beginning of the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030); secondly, to women-focused studies – a wording suggested as preferable to ‘Women’s Studies’, because it includes not only Women’s Studies as such but also Sex and Gender Medicine (Grego et al. 2020) and socio-economic disciplines when they focus on women. The latter, non-linguistic perspectives will of course be drawn upon only insofar as they prove functional to producing remarks on the discursive constructions and social critique conveyed by language. Methodologically, it is hoped this study may add itself to those contributing to the consolidation of trans-disciplinary approaches, which by today no longer need to be considered innovative and desirable but a necessity, if research is to address increasingly complex phenomena affecting people at a global level and creating and modifying social vulnerabilities at an unprecedented pace worldwide. 

Old, female and COVID-19+: issues of age and gender in the midst of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

It has often been pointed out that metaphor is particularly important among linguistic expressions of evaluation. However, there have been very few studies investigating the relation between evaluation and metaphor, this is explored in this study in the context of online news reports. The aim of this study, conducted within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, is the analysis of the mechanisms of evaluation operating in metaphors related to the concept of ANGER. 
This corpus-assisted study explores the metaphorical representations of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011 in a French news outlet. The study is based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and the rhetorically, cognitively and corpus-oriented approach to metaphor known as Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) developed by Charteris-Black (2004). 
The analysis aims to explore the attitudinal evaluation of the metaphorical representation of the emotion of ANGER in social movements. The results revealed that ANGER is mostly conceptualised as a force of nature, and that expressions of ANGER are evaluated as insecurity and dissatisfaction.

Anger in Social movements: Evaluative analysis of conceptual metaphors

The technological changes in the sphere of production that we have witnessed in the last 10 years have been of such significance as to be called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (Industry 4.0), thus an important step beyond the “Digital Revolution” of the late 20th century. Innovations such as robotics, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and the development of algorithms, all point in the same direction: that of reducing human intervention in the production process to a minimum. 
Indeed, fears have emerged that artificial intelligence will create a huge reserve army of labour. The working and middle classes worry that computers and machines will end up taking their jobs and this will leave individuals and families with no possibilities of earning a leaving for themselves. These fears are very real and create growing anxiety among workers. 

Nonetheless, human labour is still needed in many different moments in the process of production and distribution of the goods that we consume. Thus, we are now in a situation in which human and artificial intelligence interact, with the latter taking up the role that once was of the line manager in the Fordist factory – dictating the speed and quality of work required – in many “traditional” industries, or directly as a substitute for the employers, as it is the case in the uberised ones, such as food delivery. This situation has serious implications for workers’ rights as well as for the construal of their identity as workers. Indeed, “workers governed by AI […] often fall through the cracks of employment legislation both with respect to their employment status as well as protections from discrimination and unfair dismissal.” (Walker et al., 2021, p. 29). 

The issues of identity referred to above constitute a major problem for organising resistance to unfair practices in the “workplace”, but recently some new forms of organisation have started to emerge. 
A case in point is the attempt at organising the workforce of one of the most famous and powerful tech giants, Alphabet, which is the corporation that owns Google, among many other enterprises. Indeed, on January 4th, 2021 the new Alphabet Workers Union was launched to combine “the struggle for the soul of Alphabet with the broader working-class struggle in America and around the world” as the organisation states in its website (Alphabet Workers Union, 2021, p. Section Meet CWA). Issues of identity are addressed in the homepage of the union, with relational clauses (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) such as “we are empathetic workers”, and “we are technologists who trust each other” (Alphabet Workers Union, 2021, sec. Home), that attach emotions and feelings to the members of the Union. 
Using language that does not shy away from feelings is something unusual in the history of organised labour, so we could say that innovation in the production process has finally produced innovation in the language of union mobilisation and its communicative techniques. 

This paper aims at describing this new, emotional language of the Alphabet Workers Union as a form of resistance to the dehumanising rule of the algorithm. It is expected that, in the process, the anxieties and fears of the workforce will be highlighted and defined. At the same time, positive feelings and emotions attached to the re-humanising experience of pursuing a shared and collective goal are also bound to emerge.
The corpus analysed in the paper is made up of texts belonging to different genres so as to fully represent the social practice of union organising in all its semiotic aspects, from the most public to the ones used for internal communication (Askehave & Swales, 2001; Bhatia, 2008, 2015; Martin, 2014; Swales, 1990). The ideational and textual aspects of individual texts are analysed in depth through Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), while the analysis of the interpersonal aspect, i.e. the way in which social relationships are enacted through linguistic choices, is undertaken through the ‘appraisal’ paradigm developed by Martin and White (2005) as a system that accounts for the use of “semantic resources used to negotiate emotions, judgements, and valuations” (Martin, 2000, p. 145). 

References

Alphabet Workers Union. (2021). Alphabet Workers Union. Alphabet Workers Union. /
Askehave, I., & Swales, J. M. (2001). Genre identification and communicative purpose: A problem and a possible solution. Applied Linguistics, 22(2), 195–212. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/22.2.195
Bhatia, V. K. (2008). Towards Critical Genre Analysis. In V. K. Bhatia, J. Flowerdew, & R. H. Jones (Eds.), Advances in Discourse Studies (pp. 166–177).
Bhatia, V. K. (2015). Critical Genre Analysis: Theoretical Preliminaries. HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 27(54), 9–20.
Halliday, M., & Matthiessen, C. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd ed.). Hodder Education.
Martin, J. R. (2000). Beyond Exchange: APPRAISAL Systems in English. In S. Hunston & G. Thompson, Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse (pp. 142–175). Oxford University Press.
Martin, J. R. (2014). Looking out: Functional linguistics and genre. Linguistics & the Human Sciences, 9(3), 307–321. https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v9i3.307
Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. Palgrave Macmillan.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge University Press.
Walker, M., Fleming, P., & Berti, M. (2021). ‘You can’t pick up a phone and talk to someone’: How algorithms function as biopower in the gig economy. Organization, 28(1), 26–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420978831


Organising in the Industry 4.0: the rise of the "Empathetic Union"

                                                                           Abstract
This study considers a multilingual and culturally diverse post-Soviet country – Kazakhstan, where most of the population is bilingual or multilingual. In order to reverse the pre-colonial Russification, in the post-colonial period, the country has raised the status of Kazakh as the national language. However, Russian is kept as the language for inter-ethnic and regional communication, and English is adopted as the language of international communication. This small-scale study uses the concept of lifestyle diglossia (Saxena, 2014) to understand and explain the macro- & micro-level language practices in  ‘regulated spaces’ and ‘unregulated spaces’ (Sebba, 2009) through the following research questions: (1) What are the attitudes of the participants towards the languages in their language repertoire?; (2) What are their patterns of language use in different domains at macro-level?; and (3) What are their patterns of language use in digital communication at micro-level? The participants in the study were 19 family members of master’s students at Graduate School of Education. The participants were divided into three groups by age: Teenagers (10-19), Younger Adults (20-39), and Middle-aged Adults (40-59). Questionnaires conducted among the participants were consisted of eleven questions, that were employed to elicit macro-level data on language repertoire, language attitudes and language use in three different domains, such as family, friendship, and education. The micro-level language use data in different contexts of digital communication (viz., WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram) were collected over a period of three weeks during the course Multilingual Society in the Spring’21. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit participants’ attitudes towards languages in their repertoires and their language choices in the social networks. The results of the study revealed a high competence in the Kazakh language use and a positive attitude towards it were on the rise among the youngest participants, notably by teenagers. However, mainly the Russian language was favoured and accepted as the most prestigious language among the younger adults and middle-aged participants. Although the respondents’ English language competence varies, the attitude towards learning it as a foreign language was positive among all three age groups. Moreover, the micro-analysis of digital communication revealed multi-modal code-switching among these languages. Besides, code-mixing, borrowings, neologisms, abbreviations, emoticons, and shortenings were mainly used by the respondents in their digital communication in all age groups. Based on the study results, the decision tree was drawn to depict language choice depending on the formal/informal settings, intimate/non-intimate topics, serious/non-serious issues and characterized the equal usage of all languages for different purposes. 

References:
Saxena, M. (2014). ""Critical diglossia"" and ""lifestyle diglossia"": Development and the interaction between multilingualism, cultural diversity and English. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014(225), 91-112. 
https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2013-0067  
Sebba, M. (2009, June 18-20). Unregulated spaces. Plenary lecture at the conference on “Language Policy and Language Learning: New Paradigms and New Challenges”. University of Limerick, UK. 

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