Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 141-2):
Another graphicon resource regularly used for staking in the corpus is emoji. These tended to converge with both negative affect and judgement. They also often involved repetition, for instance as a cluster of emoji raising the stakes at the end of the body of a post.
The strings of multiple emoji in (40) – (43) resonate with the rejection (bold) in the verbiage as well as targeting or being triggered by the entire situation described as a stakes-raising evaluative metacomment that concentrates the accumulated negative self-assessment. This is particularly apparent in the cluster of 'Loudly Crying Face' emoji, 'Tired Face' emoji, and 'Broken Heart' emoji at the end of (43). A similar stake-raising effect was achieved through multiple hashtags negatively assessing mothers or linking mothers to negative feelings. For instance, the #badmom(s) hashtag cooccurred with such tags.
(44) I didn’t kiss my son goodbye this morning because I was upset that he didn’t eat his breakfast #momfail #momguilt #momlife #badmoms
(45) Mom guilt is the worst kind if guilt. #momguilt #badmom #schoollunch #imsorry #kids #family #school #momlife
Another way that meanings about 'bad moms' raise the stakes was through swearing. In these cases, the expletives construe an underspecified outburst of affect, usually in the environment of negative judgement targeted at the self.
(46) I had to use my mom voice tonight and I feel like fucking shit. #momlife #momguilt
(47) Got it. I’m a shitty mom with a short temper who curses too much. Fuck. #motherhood #momguilt
(48) I think I need to supplement with formula. Why does this make my heartbreak and me feel like such a fucking failure. #momguilt
(49) Anytime I allow myself to sit still and enjoy some downtime, I feel discombobulated and ashamed. #singlemom #workingmom #momguilt #bullshit
(50) I can't get frustrated with my kid without fucking hating myself for it ... What is that??? #momguilt
Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025) devote considerable attention to how digital semiotic resources—GIFs, emoji, hashtags, and swearing—function to raise interpersonal stakes in social media posts about motherhood guilt. While the description of these phenomena is rich and illustrative, several critical issues emerge when viewed through a rigorous SFL lens.
First, there is a tendency to treat these resources as uniformly stakes-raising. For instance, GIFs are described as amplifying shame and intensifying the confession genre, emoji clusters as magnifying negative self-assessment, and hashtags or expletives as consistently linking mothers to negative affect. While these examples clearly highlight heightened emotional expression, the authors do not sufficiently acknowledge the contextual variability inherent in digital communication. A GIF or a swearing expletive can signal humour, irony, solidarity, or even playfulness, depending on audience expectations, platform conventions, and co-text. The analysis risks overgeneralisation by attributing a single interpersonal effect to inherently polyvalent resources.
Second, there is a blurring of linguistic and contextual interpretation. The text treats emoji, GIFs, and hashtags as if their meaning—and their interpersonal impact—is intrinsic, rather than emergent from interaction between language, modality, and social norms. For example, the looping nature of a GIF is said to amplify stakes, yet this is a technological affordance, not a semiotic property of the message itself. Similarly, hashtags co-opted into communities may function as convoking or evaluative markers, but this effect depends heavily on the interpretive labour of participants, which is not accounted for in the authors’ reasoning.
Finally, the treatment of swearing as a uniform staking device overlooks pragmatic subtleties. Expletives may intensify emotion, but they can also index frustration, irony, or performative bonding with an imagined community. The analysis risks conflating affective intensity with interpersonal risk, without clarifying when one reliably entails the other.
In sum, while Doran, Martin & Zappavigna provide compelling examples of multimodal intensification in #momguilt posts, their account overextends the theoretical claims. The interpretation of these semiotic resources as consistent stakes-raising devices assumes a level of uniformity that is neither linguistically justified nor empirically demonstrated. A more rigorous approach would attend to contextual variability, the interplay between linguistic and technological affordances, and the socially mediated negotiation of meaning, rather than treating these resources as intrinsically potent.
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