DOI: 10.1075/jaic.26013.tru ISSN: 2211-4742
#RanaPlazaNeverAgain
Marta Trutalli, Anders Olof Larsson, Sara GrecoAbstract
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 2025
) in the
posts, focusing on the frequently occurring locus from termination and setting up (
Rigotti and
Greco 2019
). We analyse how emotions are expressed linguistically (
Micheli
2014
) 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.