“Hi Elmo, I’m Not OK”: The Structure, Use, and Role of Trauma Dumping on Social Media

Abstract

This project aims to outline the contours of trauma dumping as a discursive action and delineate its pragmatic, conversational, and sociocultural implications. Trauma dumping, while commonly known as an inappropriate divulging of sensitive and often upsetting personal information, has not been widely studied in the field of linguistics. By studying the responses to a tweet posted by Sesame Street character Elmo through a corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) methodology, this project aims to establish four conclusions: structurally, what makes up trauma dumping; thematically, what are the pragmatic features that underscore trauma dumping; conversationally, how does trauma dumping embed itself in canonical linguistic exchanges between speakers and listeners; and socioculturally, what motivates speakers to trauma dumping and what could this imply about the broader social and cultural context of the virtual anglophone world. The results of thematic coding establish that trauma dumping is best defined by explicitly traumatic content personal to the speaker as well as a deliberate disregard for the listener stemming from the listener’s lack of consent to the action. Conversationally, the phenomenon violates canonical procedures by once again disregarding the listener in order to create an interaction that is decidedly uncomfortable and socially deviant. Finally, motivators of trauma dumping, such as cultural in-group indexing, point towards an evolution of the phenomenon as a form of expressing solidarity and camaraderie.