Cover not available
Article published In:
Advances in the Study of Social Action in Online Interaction
Edited by Valeria Sinkeviciute
[Internet Pragmatics 7:1] 2024
► pp. 35–62

“I’m only half Korean but I can relate to a lot of what you said”

YouTube comments as second stories in response to “lunchbox moment” narrative videos

| University of Hong Kong
| Georgetown University
Analyzing 20 comments posted in response to YouTube videos wherein two Asian American young women share their “lunchbox moment” stories, or first-person past-oriented accounts of how their (white) classmates at school reacted negatively to food that they brought from home for lunch, we demonstrate how posters collaboratively transform individual offline experiences of marginalization and difference into online moments of inclusion, solidarity, and shared identity. Integrating research on “second stories” (Sacks 1992), “story rounds” (Tannen 2005), online storytelling (Page 2011, 2018), and online-offline interconnections (e.g., Bolander and Locher 2020), we show how commenters of diverse backgrounds accomplish “adequation” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005) between their different minority identities in how they convey their own lunchbox moment stories. By using metadiscursive terms (e.g., “story”), “constructed dialogue” (Tannen 2007), ethnic category mentions, heritage languages, familiar address terms (e.g., first name), and emojis, YouTube posters create inclusion online and across cultural, ethnic, and spaciotemporal lines.
Keywords: lunchbox moment, narrative, second stories, story rounds, adequation, participatory culture, YouTube, light community
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background: Second stories, digital stories, and adequation
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Analysis: Second lunchbox stories in YouTube video comments
    • 4.1Telling world: Expressions of similarity and metadiscourse
    • 4.2Telling world: (In)direct indicators of ethnic identity
    • 4.3Story world: How narrators describe the lunch food and depict classmates’ reactions in the story
    • 4.4Story world: Child protagonists’ reactions to their negatively evaluated home food
    • 4.5Looking back: Changed perspectives and connection
  • 5.Concluding discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 March 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00108.cho
References (57)
References
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2013. “Participatory culture and metalinguistic discourse: Performing and negotiating German dialects on YouTube.” In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, ed. by Deborah Tannen, and Anna Marie Trester, 47–71. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, Jannis, and Jana Tereick. 2015. “YouTube: Language and discourse practices in participatory culture.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication, ed. by Alexandra Gergakopoulou, and Tereza Spilioti, 354–370. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Arminen, Ilkka. 2004. “Second stories: The salience of interpersonal communication for mutual help in Alcoholics Anonymous.” Journal of Pragmatics 36(2): 319–347. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ashton, Alison. 2020. “Padma Lakshmi opens up about her early years in America, the strangest food she’s ever eaten, her new Hulu series and more.” Parade, 16 June 2020. [URL] (accessed 20 March 2022).
Bamberg, Michael G. 1997. “Positioning between structure and performance.” Journal of Narrative and Life History 7(1–4): 335–342. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011. “Narrative practice and identity navigation.” In Varieties of Narrative Analysis, ed. by James A. Holstein, and Jaber F. Gubrium, 99–124. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
Bamberg, Michael, and Alexandra Georgakopoulou. 2008. “Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis.” Text & Talk 28(3): 377–396. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bednick, Gail. 2011. “Digital storytelling and the pedagogy of human rights.” Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education 29(1): 37–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bhatia, Aditi. 2018. “Interdiscursive performance in digital professions: The case of YouTube tutorials.” Journal of Pragmatics 1241: 106–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2019. “From groups to actions and back in online-offline sociolinguistics.” Multilingua 38(4): 485–493. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, and Piia Varis. 2015. “Enoughness, accent and light communities: Essays on contemporary identities.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 1391: 1–72.Google Scholar
Bolander, Brook, and Miriam A. Locher. 2020. “Beyond the online offline distinction: Entry points to digital discourse.” Discourse, Context & Media 351, 100383. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bou-Franch, Patricia, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich. 2014. “Conflict management in massive polylogues: A case study from YouTube.” Journal of Pragmatics 731: 19–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. “Identity in interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach.” Discourse Studies 7(4–5): 585–614. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chou, Wen-Ying Sylvia, Yvonne Hunt, Anna Folkers, and Erik Augustson. 2011. “Cancer survivorship in the age of Youtube and social media: A narrative analysis.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 13(1): e7. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chun, Elaine W. 2001. “The construction of white, black, and Korean American identities through African American vernacular English.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11(1): 52–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coates, Jennifer. 2011. “‘My mind is with you’: Story sequences in the talk of male friends.” Narrative Inquiry 11(1): 81–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Fina, Anna. 2016. “Storytelling and audience reactions in social media.” Language in Society 45(4): 473–498. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, John W. 2007. “The stance triangle.” In Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, ed. by Robert Englebretson, 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dynel, Marta. 2014. “Participation framework underlying YouTube interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 731: 37–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2015. “Sharing as sescripting: Place manipulations on YouTube between narrative and social media affordances.” Discourse, Context & Media 91: 64–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giles, David C., and Julie Newbold. 2013. “‘Is this normal?’: The role of category predicates in constructing mental illness online.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18(4): 476–490. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Cynthia. 2023. Intertextuality 2.0: Metadiscourse and Meaning-Making in an Online Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Cynthia, and Hanwool Choe. 2019. “‘What is that smell?’: How Asian Americans’ YouTube ‘lunchbox moment’ stories convey and challenge cultural marginalization.” Paper presented at the 16th Conference of the International Pragmatics Association. Hong Kong, 9–14 June 2019.
Gordon, Cynthia, and Didem İkizoğlu. 2017. “‘Asking for another’ online: Membership categorization and identity construction on a food and nutrition discussion board.” Discourse studies 19(3): 253–271. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guo, Li. 2020. “Together and alone: Telling second stories on the humans of New York Facebook page.” Storytelling, Self, Society 16(2): 244–262. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Sandra, and Julie Barlow. 2009. “Politeness strategies and advice-giving in an online arthritis workshop.” Journal of Politeness Research 5(1): 93–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herring, Susan C. 1999. “Interactional coherence in CMC.” Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences: 1-13. DOI logo
2004. “Computer-mediated discourse analysis: An approach to researching online behavior.” In Designing Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning, ed. by Sasha A. Barab, Rob Kling, and James H. Gray, 338–376. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013. “Discourse in Web 2.0: Familiar, reconfigured, and emergent.” In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, ed. by Deborah Tannen, and Anna Marie Trester, 1–25. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Huang, Eddie. 2013. Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir. New York: Spiegel & Grau.Google Scholar
İkizoğlu, Didem, and Cynthia Gordon. 2021. “‘Vegetables as a chore’: Constructing and problematizing a ‘picky eater’ Identity Online.” In Identity and Ideology in Digital Food Discourse: Social Media Interactions Across Cultural Contexts, ed. by Alla Tovares, and Cynthia Gordon, 13–32. London: Bloomsbury. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karrebæk, Martha Sif. 2012. “‘What’s in your lunch box today?’: Health, respectability, and ethnicity in the primary classroom.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 22(1): 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, Dasol. 2021. “The growing up Asian American tag: An Asian American networked counterpublic on YouTube.” International Journal of Communication 15(2): 123–142.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin. 2006. “Identity à la carte: You are what you eat.” In Discourse and Identity, ed. by Anna De Fina, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg, 142–165. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lockyer, Sue, and Leah Wingard. 2020. “Reconstructing agency using reported private thought in narratives of survivors of sex trafficking.” Narrative Inquiry 30(1): 142–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lovelock, Michael. 2019. “‘My coming out story’: Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth identities on YouTube.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 22(1): 70–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Osvaldsson, Karin. 2011. “Bullying in context: Stories of bullying on an internet discussion board.” Children & Society 25(4): 317–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Page, Ruth. 2010. “Re-examining narrativity: Small stories in status updates.” Text & Talk 30(4): 423–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2018. Narratives Online: Shared Stories in Social Media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paulus, Trena M., and Mary Alice Varga. 2015. “‘Please know that you are not alone with your pain’: Responses to newcomer posts in an online grief support forum.” Death Studies 39(10): 633–640. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, Livia. 1981. “Telling the same story twice.” Text & Talk 1(4): 315–336. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation: Volume II, ed. by Gail Jefferson and with an introduction by Emanuel A. Schegloff, 249–260. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Siromaa, Maarit. 2012. “Resonance in conversational second stories: A dialogic resource for stance taking.” Text & Talk 32(4): 525–545. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stommel, Wyke, and Tom Koole. 2010. “The online support group as a community: A micro-analysis of the interaction with a new member.” Discourse studies 12(3): 357–378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. 2005. Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “The medium is the metamessage: Conversational style in new media interaction.” Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, ed. by Deborah Tannen, and Anna Marie Trester, 99–118. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Veen, Mario, Hedwig te Molder, Bart Gremmen, and Cees van Woerkum. 2010. “Quitting is not an option: An analysis of online diet talk between celiac disease patients.” Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 14(1): 23–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vuong, An. 2018. “Lunchbox moment.” Sparks, 12 April 2018. [URL] (accessed 7 May 2020).
Wiggins, Sally. 2012. “The social life of ‘eugh’: Disgust as assessment in family mealtimes.” British Journal of Social Psychology 52(3):489–509. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zappavigna, Michele. 2014. “CofffeeTweets: Bonding around the bean on Twitter.” In The Language of Social Media: Identity and Community on the Internet, ed. by Philip Seargeant, and Caroline Tagg, 139–160. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zappavigna, Michele, and Andrew S. Ross. 2022. “Instagram and intermodal configurations of value: Ideology, aesthetics, and attitudinal stance in #avotoast posts.” Internet Pragmatics 5(2): 197–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Choe, Hanwool
2024. The presentation of self via everyday vlogging: Analyzing everyday vlogs of Korean expatriates. Discourse, Context & Media 59 ► pp. 100784 ff. DOI logo
Lånkan, Kjersti Blehr
2024. “I saw you on TV – here’s my problem”: Exploring participant experiences with second stories following mental health disclosures on Norwegian television. Nordicom Review 45:2 ► pp. 277 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.