A Discourse Analysis of Suicide Tendency in Photographer Lu Dawson’s Posts on Public Acconts: An Approach of Non-real World and Real World

Abstract

With the number of diagnoses of depression increasing each year and the high frequency of suicides, depression has become a challenge in the fields of neurology and psychology due to its complex etiology and pathogenesis difficult to trace. However, research has demonstrated that language use patterns can reflect the mental state and psychological characteristics of the user (Huang Guanlan and Zhou Xiaolu, 2021). Therefore this paper, based on Kugrerberg and Gliat's (2012) discourse differentiation between "reality orientation" and "non-reality orientation " analyzes the discourse posted by the photographer Lu Dawson on his Weibo and Xiaohongshu accounts before his suicide, adopting the DSM diagnostic criteria for depression as the discourse differentiation method. in terms of vocabulary and syntax. As is revealed, the content of Weibo accounts with more followers expressed suicidal tendencies in a more direct way. At the lexical level, the first person singular, negative words and a large number of vaguely restricted adverbs are employed; at the syntactic level, a large number of rhetorical questions and apologetic sentences are utilized, demonstrating the blogger's disappointment and guilt,  which is highly consistent with the symptoms of depression as defined by neurology. This study may provide a reference for identifying the help-seeking signals and life-ending intentions of those who suffer from depression in hope to reduce the occurrence of tragedies.