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The Mental Lexicon: Online-First Articles

Xiaosi ‘die laughing’ as a discourse marker

A Corpus-based study during the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan

ORCID logo | National Chengchi University
 | National Chengchi University
This study investigates the usage of 笑死 (xiaosi hereafter, ‘laugh-die; die laughing’) in Facebook posts retrieved during Taiwan’s level-3 COVID-19 alert period (5/15/2021–7/26/2021). The analysis of xiaosi revealed that it serves two major functions: (a) as its literal meaning, ‘to laugh to death’ (die laughing), and (b) as a discourse marker. The use of this discourse-marker function demonstrates that it has acquired a new pragmatic function in social media contexts beyond its literal meaning. Specifically, xiaosi can express a speaker’s stance or provide an evaluative comment on the situation, thus introducing a new conversational function distinct from its original meaning.
Keywords: die laughing, xiaosi laugh-die, social media, discourse marker, corpus
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Methodology
    • Step 1: Search for the keyword xiaosi in CrowdTangle
    • Step 2: The retrieved data are subsequently downloaded in Microsoft Excel for further analysis
  • Results
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
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References (9)
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