A study on the trauma narratives in online discourse of the Chinese hearing-impaired community

Abstract Social media networks provide a comfortable space for the hearing-impaired community, becoming an important medium for them to share personal emotions and seek social support. This study collected hearing impairment logs published by the Chinese hearing-impaired community on social media platforms as the corpus. Using qualitative research methods, the study analyzes the trauma-related linguistic features, narrative structures, and emotional expressions characteristic of their discourse on these platforms. The study indicates that the trauma narratives in the online discourse of the Chinese hearing-impaired group exhibit certain linguistic and structural features, including frequent use of psychological vocabulary, pronouns, tense shifts, and negations. In terms of narrative structure, these stories tend to be linear, yet often incoherent and fragmented. Emotionally, the narratives primarily convey negative emotions, although they tend to evolve into more positive sentiments over time. The findings not only incorporate social media discourse into the research scope, contributing to the expansion of health discourse studies, but also reflect the role of humanities and social sciences research in supporting vulnerable groups’ integration into society, aligning with the language strategies of the Healthy China initiative.