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Abstract
Web 2.0 mourning is said to afford increased opportunities for the deceased's and mourners' visibility as well as create in the bereaved an increased sense of social support through the participatory entextualisation of mourning. So far, however, there has been little systematic attention to the uses of narrative in social network sites. The present article addresses this gap by providing an analysis of entextualised moments of mourning as stories shared by a single author over a six-month period on a Facebook Rest in Peace memorial group. The article foregrounds heterogeneity in narrative activity across posts, linking diversity in ways of telling to different types of the online mourner's positioning at three interrelated levels of discourse construction: (1) the representation of the event of death, (2) the alignment (or disalignment) with the dead and the networked mourners and (3) the poster's self. It is argued that telling stories on Facebook memorial sites constitutes an act of sharing affording networked individuals resources for making meaning out of the meaninglessness of a loved one's death in ways that can help render the painful experience of loss tellable and also create a sense of ambient affiliation or affinity with networked mourners.
Notes
[1] Based on Facebook Statistics (June 2014), the platform engages 829 million daily active users on average, 81.7% of whom are outside the US and Canada (Facebook Company Info, 2014).
[2] Recent publications on social media in the field of sociolinguistics include a student guide on research methods on language and social media by Ruth Page, David Barton, Johann Unger and Michele Zappavigna (Citation2014), a collection of papers on identity and community, edited by Philip Seargeant and Caroline Tagg (Citation2014), a collection of papers drawn from the 2011 Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) edited by Deborah Tannen and Anne-Marie Trester (Citation2013), and an introduction to digital media literacies co-authored by Rodney Jones and Christopher Hafner (Citation2012) not to mention the numerous articles, special issues both published and forthcoming by various authors.
[3] For an overview of literature on the topic, see Walter et al. (Citation2011).
[4] Abstract refers to what the story is about, Orientation provides the background to the story in terms of time, place and main characters, Complicating Action is the core narrative action providing the “what happened next” or main event element of the story, Resolution includes what happened finally and Coda signals the end of the story and marks the return to the time of telling. Evaluation is the section which encodes the teller's attitudes, stances and feelings to the reported events (Labov, Citation1972, Citation1997, 2004).
[5] Tellership refers to whether there is one or more tellers, Tellability refers to the extent to which an account is considered to be worth telling, Embeddedness refers to whether and a how a story is embedded in other contexts (e.g. as part of a conversation), Linearity refers to whether and how events are temporally and causally ordered and finally, Moral stance refers to the teller's (and characters') stances to the telling.
[6] Temporal juncture between two independent clauses is considered to be a defining feature of narrative structure and is said to exist between two narrative clauses when a change in the order of the clauses produces a change in the interpretation of the order of the referenced events in past time (for an overview and appraisal of Labov and Waletzy's model of narrative, see De Fina & Georgakopoulou, Citation2012, pp. 26–36).
[7] According to John (Citation2013, pp. 170–171) the notion of sharing in SNSs metaphorically draws on understandings of sharing that are prevalent in Western, urban, middle-class therapeutic culture characterised by the spread of psychological principles into personal relationships and encouraging us to share all needs and feelings.
[8] See also Georgakopoulou (Citation2007, p. 124).
[9] It is worth noting that across the site, group members who were not friends or acquaintances of the deceased tend to make that explicit at the start of their post and explain why they are writing on the site (e.g. reports of how much they wish they had met him or how much they have inspired by his impact on others' lives abound in such posts).
[10] All names used in the article are pseudonyms in an attempt to protect the anonymity of the deceased and group members. Also, specific references to location or other references to individuals' personal information have been omitted for reasons of ethics. The analysis has been conducted with a deep sense of respect for the deceased young adult, his family and friends.
[11] Note on transcription: The transcription of moments from the Facebook site is based on the unit of line defined as a clause including a finite verb. Note that openings and closings have been marked as separate lines due to their role in the discourse organisation of the post. Orthography is retained and no amendments have been made to the text with the exception of replacing real names with pseudonyms and omitting references to places and other named individuals.
[12] According to Baptist beliefs, when Christians die, their bodies are buried but their spirits (or souls) are immediately ushered into the presence of the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8).
[13] Furthermore, the expression of her commitment in the coda section to commemorate and remember him all the time (I'm gonna be wearin that blue & orange like its going outa style, I'll be talking to you EVERY night in my prayers) can be interpreted as an injunction to networked mourners to do the same.
[14] Letters A, B and C represent different participants in the interaction.
[15] Julian Barnes (Citation2013, p. 107) remarks that “in the US emotional optimism is a constitutional duty”.