The effects of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic have been wide reaching and the ways in which communication now takes place has fallen in line with such changes. The rise in use of telecommunication is prevalent within all fields of most note education, business and of course medicine. Indeed, the way in which patients now interact with doctors also most frequently takes place through teleconsultations, business meetings take place predominately online and teaching and learning follow the same trend. 

These changes in our everyday lives have brought with them an array of emotions and psychological challenges connected to themes of isolation, fear, illness as well as depression. The discursive representation of emotions has been studied in literature in line with emotions in the workplace (Ahuja, Heizmann & Clegg, 2019; Moisander, Hirsto & Fahy, 2016), student behaviour (Zsuzsa & Bendix Petersen, 2015) as well as mental health and illness (Sointu, 2016; Pavlova & Berkers, 2020). The current circumstances have also led the scientific community to recognise and investigate the challenges connected to adapting our lives and the effects of stress in this period with particular attention paid to the amount of time spent online (Horesh & Brown, 2020). 

Indeed, this has also opened up discussion into the perception of ourselves online in our new roles, new modes of interaction as well as our physical appearance. The representation of the latter has been relatively well explored discursively particularly in terms of social media. Studies have investigated discourses connected to beauty and physical appearance in a variety of ways with a particular focus on the female body as well as the concept of body image and even body dysmorphia (Aanesen, Notøy & Berg, 2020; Lewallen & Behm-Morawitz, 2016; Khanna & Sharma, 2017). The innovative and sudden introduction of such frequent remote communication has brought the concept of our own body-image under greater scrutiny. We now find ourselves faced with our own images on the screen for prolonged periods of time (a new vision of ourselves for many) and this has led to pause for reflection on the potential psychological and  even emotional consequences in some cases. This is turn seems to be leading to a greater interest and increase in requests for cosmetic surgery, the so-called “Zoom Boom” (Meeson, 2020). 

A key purpose of plastic surgery is restoring one’s physical appearance and/or function (following trauma or cancer) or enhancing it for aesthetic purposes in the case of cosmetic surgery. However, plastic surgery is an elective field of surgery and the current circumstances have led to many cancellations and rescheduling of surgeries. Aside from the backlog of patients that then ensues, the wait can also have a drastic impact on the patient’s psychological well-being. Despite this, patients wishing to enhance their physical appearance are still considering cosmetic surgery, where possible, as the current lockdown (and smart working) makes the healing time more feasible with less downtime and time away from work (Meeson, 2020). 

Therefore, this study poses the following research questions: 
•	What kinds of discourses exist surrounding choosing to undergo cosmetic surgery during a pandemic?
•	How has the pandemic impacted on emotional moods and levels of depression during lockdown leading to a greater awareness of our physical appearance and wish to enhance it? 
•	To what extent has telecommunication influenced the choice to undergo cosmetic surgery? 
•	Has the perception of one’s self been distorted through the digital image constantly under scrutiny through remote communication?

The corpus in question will be collected through the creation of an online ethnographic sociolinguistic questionnaire which will be distributed through social networks and email as well as semi-structured sociolinguistic interviews carried out in online cosmetic surgery focus groups. The study will combine sociolinguistic analysis (Milroy & Gordon, 2003) and corpus linguistics tools (Baker, 2010) employing a qualitative, quantitative and statistical analysis in order to investigate the abovementioned research questions. The lines of enquiry will explore the social variables of gender and age and a linguistic analysis will be carried out with particular attention to the ideological, psychological as well as metaphorical content.

Results are expected to reveal that the pandemic and the diffusion of remote communication is likely influenced by the psychological effects of lockdown, lower moods and a potential distortion of one’s own perception. 

References 
Aanesen, S. M., Notøy, R., & Berg, H. (2020). The Re-shaping of Bodies: A Discourse Analysis of Feminine Athleticism. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 1751. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01751
Ahuja S, Heizmann H, Clegg S. (2019) Emotions and identity work: Emotions as discursive resources in the constitution of junior professionals’ identities. Human Relations. 72(5): 988-1009. doi:10.1177/0018726718785719
Baker, P., (2010). Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics, Edinburgh University Press. 
Horesh D, Brown A.D. (2020) Traumatic stress in the age of COVID-19: A call to close critical gaps and adapt to new realities. Psychological Trauma. 12(4): 331-335. doi: 10.1037/tra0000592 
Lewallen J, Behm-Morawitz E. (2016). Pinterest or Thinterest?: Social Comparison and Body Image on Social Media. Social Media + Society, 2 (1). doi:10.1177/2056305116640559
Khanna, A., & Sharma, M. K. (2017). Selfie use: The implications for psychopathology expression of body dysmorphic disorder. Industrial psychiatry journal, 26(1), 106–109. https://doi.org/10.4103/ipj.ipj_58_17
Meeson, S. (2020). Why plastic-surgery demand is booming amid lockdown. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200909-why-plastic-surgery-demand-is-booming-amid-lockdown (Last accessed 27.02.2021)
Milroy. L. & Gordon, M. (2003). Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation. Blackwell Publishing. 
Moisander, J.K., Hirsto, H, Fahy K.M. (2016) Emotions in Institutional Work: A Discursive Perspective. Organization Studies. 37(7): 963-990. doi:10.1177/0170840615613377
Pavlova, A. & Berkers, P. (2020). Mental health discourse and social media: Which mechanisms of cultural power drive discourse on Twitter. Social science & medicine (1982), 263 doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113250
Sointu, E. (2016). Discourse, Affect and Affliction. The Sociological Review. 64(2): 312-328. doi: 10.1111/1467-954X.12334
Zsuzsa, M. & Bendix Petersen, E. (2015) Complicating ‘student behaviour’: exploring the discursive constitution of ‘learner subjectivities’  Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 20:1, 20-34, doi: 10.1080/13632752.2014.947097



The "Zoom boom" in cosmetic surgery: a corpus-based linguistic analysis

**Session Chair:** Samantha Laporte




Panel 9: Body-image and feelings of belonging

technical paper

## **The Linguistic Construction of Emotional Challenges in a Changing Society**


**Languaging Diversity** is the itinerating conference of the [I-Land Interuniversity Research Centre](https://www.unior.it/index2.php?content_id=14038&content_id_start=1&titolo=i-land-research-centre&parLingua=ENG), an international independent and interdisciplinary center for advanced studies in Linguistics, Social Sciences and the Humanities with a focus on the key notions of identity and diversity, from a linguistic, cultural, and gender studies perspective, in and across cultures. 

Following the six successful events hosted by the Universities of Naples (2013), Catania (2014), Macerata (2016), Cagliari (2017), Antwerp (2018) and Teruel (2019), the seventh edition of the Languaging Diversity Conference (LD2021) will be organized by the University of Lille, France. Due to the COVID-19 ongoing pandemic, the event will be held exclusively online via the virtual conference management platform [Underline](https://underline.io/).


**Focus **

The 7th edition of the Languaging Diversity Conference (LD2021) focuses on the emotional challenges that result from the social innovations of the last two decades, and on the way such experiences are expressed in discourse. Conference convenors invite papers and posters that investigate the intersection of emotion, communication and social change, also within the framework of digital communication. The contributions presented at the LD2021 conference will explore the expression of emotion(s) at the different levels of linguistic description (phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic, discursive), and in texts and contexts related to traditional and digital genres in different domains, including (but not restricted to) health, medicine and science, media, politics, the law, academia, the world of corporate and institutional work, education and learning. 


**Conference convenors**

* Giuditta Caliendo, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Mégane Lesuisse, Université de Lille & STL, France

 
**Scientific Committee**

* Giuseppe Balirano, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘l’Orientale’, Italy
* Henry Hernandez Bayter, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Stéphanie Caët, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Giuditta Caliendo, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Bert Cappelle, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Paola Catenaccio, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
* Emmanuelle Canut, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Stefania D’Avanzo, Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Italy
* Ilse Depraetere, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Emilia Di Martino, Università degli Studi ‘Suor Orsola Benincasa’, Italy
* Antonio Fruttaldo, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘l’Orientale’, Italy
* Dariusz Galasiński, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Poland
* Kim Grego, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
* Siria Guzzo, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
* Geert Jacobs, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
* Samantha Laporte, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Mégane Lesuisse, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Jeannette Littlemore, University of Birmingham, UK
* Julien Longhi, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France
* Corinne Oster, Université de Lille & CECILLE, France
* Paolo Mairano, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Antonella Napolitano, Università del Sannio, Italy
* Maria Cristina Nisco, Università degli studi di Napoli ‘Parthenope’, Italy
* Annick Rivens Mompean, Université de Lille & STL, France 
* Margaret Rasulo, Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Italy
* Catherine Ruchon,Université Sorbonne Paris Nord -Pléiade, France
* Hans-Jörg Schmid, LMU München, Germany
* Jerome Tessuto, Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Italy


[**Organizing Committee**](https://ld2021.sciencesconf.org/)

* Giuditta Caliendo, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Justin Duquesnoy, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Océane Foubert, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Lola Marinato, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Mégane Lesuisse, Université de Lille & STL, France
* Sayf-Eddine Mohamed, Université de Lille & STL, France

**Keynote Speakers**

**Maïa Ponsonnet**
<iframe width=640 height=360 style="border:0;" scrolling="no" src="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/crQUbGV6Kgz" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

**Jeannette Littlemore**
<iframe width=640 height=360 style="border:0;" scrolling="no" src="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cr6i2TVX2d0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

**Andrea Scarantino**
<iframe width=640 height=360 style="border:0;" scrolling="no" src="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/crQUbEV6KgI" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

To access the **Languaging Diversity 2021** conference, please remember to [register.](https://ld2021.sciencesconf.org/registration) 

Languaging Diversity 2021

Languaging Diversity  is the itinerating conference of the I-Land Interuniversity Research Centre, an international independent and interdisciplinary center for advanced studies in Linguistics, Social Sciences and the Humanities with a focus on the key notions of identity and diversity, from a linguistic, cultural, and gender studies perspective, in and across cultures. 

Roxanne Holly Padley

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The "Zoom boom" in cosmetic surgery: a corpus-based linguistic analysis

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