Adoptees SPEAK: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of adult Korean adopted persons’ adoption narratives on Instagram

ABSTRACT This multimodal critical discourse analysis of the Adoptees SPEAK Instagram feed examines how Korean adopted persons create a counterpublic of adoption which recenters the adoption narrative around the agency and identity of adopted persons. First, thematic analysis was conducted to determine dominant themes within the captions. Then, transitivity analysis of the feed’s captions was paired with image analysis. Findings supported the dominant theme of Being an Adopted Person and illustrate how contributors’ use of material processes in text, as well as gaze, distance, and visual metonymy establish adopted persons as the subject of a complex and ongoing adoption narrative. The resulting counterpublic challenges mainstream discourses about adoption as child-rescue and representations of adoptive persons as passive subjects. Through verbal and visual metonymy which complexified historic discourses of adoption, the adopted persons in Adoptees SPEAK (re)positioned themselves within discourses of race, ethnicity, power, language, and social action. This study outlines how marginalized individuals and groups can use language and self-images to reclaim their identities and linguistic agency while simultaneously engaging in social action.