Not an expert, but not a fan either. A corpus-based study of negative self-identification in web forum interaction

This study examines the linguistic micro-management of identity in and across online contexts, drawing upon corpus-based pragmatic analyses of a structure with a meaning potential to examine wider questions about identity in digitally mediated social life. The structure in focus is negative self-identifiers of the type “I + copula + not + indefinite NP” used in UK web discussion forums. This structure was chosen because it is the most explicit linguistic realization of non-identification with a nominally expressed conceptual category, which serves to contrast the speaker with explicit or presupposed claims and thus indexes how speakers perceive, and discursively create, the context they are writing into. By means of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the forms and functions of 936 instances of the structure in their co-texts, it was found that negative self-identifiers from the fields of expertise and preferences were salient in the examined corpus. They were frequently used to frame co-texts in which speakers linguistically enacted various forms of expertise, pointing to heightened reflexivity regarding the epistemic status and social impact of their utterances and a reconceptualization of expertise as a transient discourse phenomenon rather than a more permanent identity feature.