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Article In: Journal of Argumentation in Context: Online-First Articles

#RanaPlazaNeverAgain

Reasons and emotions in digital activists’ argumentation advocating for a more sustainable fashion system

ORCiD logo with link | USI Università della Svizzera italiana
 | Kristiania University College
 | USI Università della Svizzera italiana
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Abstract
This paper explores the connection between emotions and argumentative inference in digital activists’ discourse on fashion sustainability. We explore this theoretical problem through an empirical approach, drawing on a corpus of activists’ Instagram messages posted during Fashion Revolution Week, a campaign launched to commemorate the 2013 Rana Plaza accident which killed more than a thousand garment workers.
We reconstruct argumentative configurations (Lucchini, Costanza. 2025. “Extending the Notion of Argumentative Patterns.” Paper presented at the European Conference on Argumentation (ECA), Warsaw (Poland), September 2025.) in the posts, focusing on the frequently occurring locus from termination and setting up (Rigotti, Eddo, and Sara Greco. 2019. Inference in Argumentation: A Topics-based Approach to Argument Schemes. Cham: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). We analyse how emotions are expressed linguistically (Micheli, Raphaël. 2014. Les Émotions dans les Discours: Modèle D’analyse, Perspectives Empiriques. Louvain-La-Neuve: De Boeck Supérieur. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and how they interact with loci. Our findings show that the linguistic analysis of emotions needs to be complemented by an analysis of argumentative inference; and we introduce the concept of emotional dynamics to explain how argumentative inference can produce a change in emotions, moving from dysphoric emotions about a tragic accident towards hope for systemic change.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Digital activism supporting sustainable fashion
    • 2.2The linguistic analysis of emotions: Micheli’s model
    • 2.3Argumentative inference and emotions
      • 2.3.1The locus from termination and setting up
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data collection
    • 3.2Data annotation and analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1General overview of the occurrence of arguments
    • 4.2Argumentative configurations: Analysis of argumentative inference
    • 4.3Emotions and inference
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
References (48)
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