Adoptees SPEAK: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of adult Korean adopted persons’ adoption narratives on Instagram

ABSTRACT

This multimodal critical discourse analysis of the Adoptees SPEAK Instagram feed examines how Korean adopted persons create a counterpublic of adoption which recenters the adoption narrative around the agency and identity of adopted persons. First, thematic analysis was conducted to determine dominant themes within the captions. Then, transitivity analysis of the feed’s captions was paired with image analysis. Findings supported the dominant theme of Being an Adopted Person and illustrate how contributors’ use of material processes in text, as well as gaze, distance, and visual metonymy establish adopted persons as the subject of a complex and ongoing adoption narrative. The resulting counterpublic challenges mainstream discourses about adoption as child-rescue and representations of adoptive persons as passive subjects. Through verbal and visual metonymy which complexified historic discourses of adoption, the adopted persons in Adoptees SPEAK (re)positioned themselves within discourses of race, ethnicity, power, language, and social action. This study outlines how marginalized individuals and groups can use language and self-images to reclaim their identities and linguistic agency while simultaneously engaging in social action.

Notes

1. Following cognitive linguistics conventions, metaphors and metonymies are presented in small caps; “FOR,” which abbreviates “stands for” indicates the relationship between the portion of the subject being highlighted and the entire subject.

2. I utilize the term “adopted persons” rather than “adoptees” as a rejection of a label which metonymizes a single aspect of these individuals’ complex identities. During her review of this article, one of the founding members of SPEAK described debate within the organization regarding the use of the term “adoptees” which was ultimately chosen over “adopted persons” out of “convenience more than anything else” despite another founding member’s strong preference for “adopted persons.” She contrasted the term with “adoptive parents” rather than “adopted parents,” noting, “we certainly didn’t adopt them [parents] (we certainly didn’t have the choice)” (personal communication, August 22, 2019).