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17"Baby dust to everyone": Researcii
Article
Emoting infertility in Nigerian online trying to conceive (TTC) forums
'Rotimi Taiwo1, Olajumoke Oyinlade Adebayo2
Abstract
Expression of emotions, common feelings and making sense of identities are viable features of online discussion forums. The practice of women trying to conceive (TTC) going online to seek support, though an unfolding practice in Nigeria, is becoming a major way of coping with involuntary fertility challenges outside the confines of the traditional communication system, especially for young women. Communication in TTC boards involves engaging a number of discursive practices through which these women express their emotions as they form a supportive online community. This paper investigates Nigerian participants' cognitive framing of emotion in a TTC discussion board on Nairaland Forum, as well as their stance taking and engagement strategies. Findings reveal construction of a strong sense of community through performativity of intimate sociality, emotional closeness and online familyhood in the narratives. Cognitive framing was done though cognitive verbs, which were predominantly used to construct knowledge, hope and feelings of the participants. Hedges and boosters were deployed for expressing certainty as well as uncertainty and Questions and Directives were used to engage other participants in enhancing a good support system as well as co-constructing the infertility experience in order to achieve the ultimate goals of fertility, pregnancy and safe delivery.
Received:
14 October 2022 Reviewed: 15 December 2022 Accepted: 23 December 2022 Published: 27 December 2022
Keywords
stance; engagement; TTC; online forum; identity; infertility; support
UDC:
8Ï42+8Ï27
1 Obafemi Awolowo University, Department of Rom 211, Humanities Block 3, 220005, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
2 Department of English, Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji-Arakeji, Nigeria
Corresponding author:
'Rotimi Taiwo (Mr.), ferotai@yahoo.com
For citation:
Taiwo, 'Rotimi, and Olajumoke Oyinlade Adebayo. 2022. "'Baby dust to everyone': Emoting infertility in Nigerian online trying to conceive (TTC) forums." Language. Text. Society 9 (2). https://ltsj.online/2022-09-2-taiwo-adebayo.
Language. Text. Society
Vol. 9 No. 2, 2022
ISSN 2687-0487
Introduction
Socialization in modern times is becoming increasingly done through cyberspace and online communities of people of common interests. This practice appears to be challenging power dynamics in discourse. As the Internet is becoming a very useful and fruitful source of health information for patients, more people, especially women trying to conceive, are beginning to find support system in online bulletin boards as they discuss how to manage the constant cycle of hope and despair that go with the waiting period (Harrison 2014). Women going through such challenges congregate in online forums to discuss their experiences, share their feelings, symptoms, pregnancy test results and other details and work together to support one another. This practice that has existed for a relatively longer time in the Western world is becoming more acceptable among young women in Nigeria. In Nigeria's context where involuntary infertility is stigmatized and artificial reproductive technology is yet to be fully accepted, young women trying to conceive are beginning to find online discussion groups the place to break their silence and express themselves and their emotions on common feelings.
Womanhood is often conflated with motherhood in most cultures and motherhood without children is often perceived as unnatural, thus remaining childless is fraught with tension (Burns 2018). This is particularly true of Nigeria, where there is a trajectory of a woman's life in which the society assumes that marriage will ultimately lead to motherhood. Where this is absent, women suffer the social consequences (Okonofua, et. al. 1997). When the expected is challenged by infertility, couples go any length for solution, including, in recent times, joining online forums to share their vulnerabilities. Daniluk (1997) is of the view that whether or not a woman can conceive and parent directly reflects her identity and self-image. Looking for a forum to express such identity is part of the way women try to cope with involuntary infertility while it lasts. They seek other women going through similar experiences, read about their experience and participate in their narratives to fully make sense of their identities (Riessman 2008).
Scholarship on healthcare discourse in Nigeria has been quite extensive, and these include the interpersonal communication processes between doctors or nurse and patients (Odebunmi 2006; Odebunmi 2011; Unuabonah 2021), the discourse of health promotion messages (Oyebode and Unuabonah 2013; Faleke 2017; Aragbuwa and Adeyemo 2021; Asogwa 2021), ante-natal health talks (Taiwo and Salami 2007; Abioye 2011; Unuabonah and Taiwo 2015). In recent times, some of these practices have migrated online and many scholars in the Western world have investigated the discursive practices in online health care forums (Harison 2014; Hanna and Gough 2016; Stenstrom 2020). The practice of women trying to conceive (TTC) going online to seek support is still unfolding in Nigeria and it could be largely seen as their reaction to the societal stigmatization of their condition and a way of providing virtual support for themselves. The relative novelty of this practice probably explains why scholarship on it is under-explored. This study investigates how women in Nigeria engage these new online spaces to cognitively frame their experiences and construct stances as well as engage one another with a view to seeking how to cope with the challenges of conception, pregnancy and delivery.
Online TTC forums
Online TTC forums are forums created online for women who are trying to cope with involuntary infertility. It is therefore typically a community of women who have chosen to collaborate and support one another through the process, which exists within a system of genres related to fertility and health care (Ancheta 2016). However, it is evident that some men participate in TTC discussions (Hanna and Gough 2016). For participants, online forums are turned into discourse communities that offer support and help women to understand fertility issues better. Members of online TTC forums
typically have the feelings of attachment, loyalty, and obligation toward one another and the site that brings them together. Issues of common concerns border on women's menstrual cycles, pregnancy and fertility treatments.
The discourses on TTC discussion boards are often characterized by expression of strong emotion portraying participants' continuous waves of hope and disappointments and the need for support as they wait to conceive. There is a collective expression of emotional support for members who have experienced miscarriages and risky medical conditions related to infertility.
TTC discussion boards are not just for discussions, members also share literature recommendations or links to outside sources for the benefits of building members' knowledge base. In many cases, members who have achieved their goal of conceiving and having their own children retain their membership and continue to encourage and raise the hopes of those who are still in the process. They often share their experiences and become 'consultants' to these other members The desire to find inclusion and commonality illustrates how TTC discussion boards truly function as an (Internet) lifeline (Stenstrom 2020).
Literature review
The major focus of many studies on online infertility forums is the construction of a community of women with commitment towards one another. From digital media and health promotion perspective, Ley (2007) examines how "social life and technical life mutually construct one another in online support environment" (p. 1389). She describes the kind of presence of commitment identified in these forums as "architecture of commitment", referring to the sites' governance administration as well as the spatial and temporal organisation. Drentea and Moren-Cross' (2005) study, a discourse analytic one, identifies the creation and maintenance of social capital in infertility forums through emotional support, instrumental support and community building/protection. All these contribute to the group's collective identity.
Johnson, et. al. (2019) using Kress and van Leeuwen's multimodal discourse analysis framework, show the potentials the social media platforms have as new arena for patients to challenge medical expertise by circumventing it or adopting lay expertise instead of practitioner suggestions. In this context of general mediatization of issues in contemporary times, women, who are often unwilling to confide even in friends or immediate family members, share intimate and sensitive experiences about their infertility in online forums and this is why Bost (2008, 342) asserts that online TTC boards induce shared vulnerability.
The tendencies for people who suffer one health issue or the other to depend on online medical consultations rather than healthcare professional consultations has been generating worries and debates among medical practitioners, especially because of the legal, ethical and social effects of the trend (George and Dequenoy 2008; Zhang, et. al. 2017). The major concern of healthcare practitioners is the increase in peer-to-peer health care discussion boards, which encourages information sharing from experience and signposting other sources of information (Bond and Ahmed 2016). An increase in alternative consultative practices through discourse communities online may lead to the redefining of the nature of health knowledge and expertise.
Investigating online communication has also been extensively done from the perspective of discourse analysis, and this is because discourse analysis has the potential to lay bare how these interactions connect with the social contexts from which they are being produced. Discourse analysis is able to explain the attitudes, beliefs and ideologies that underlie the production and the strategies participants employ to establish, maintain, negotiate and reproduce (a)symmetrical relations of power and ideology in the discourse.
There have been scholarly investigations of discursive construction of identities in online discussion boards of women trying to conceive. For instance, Neter and Goren (2017) underscore the centrality of the fertility problem in the woman's identity. DeRose (2016) investigates how women trying to conceive construct identities about their infertility status and their two-week wait (2WW)— the duration between ovulation and confirmation of pregnancy, which is the most crucial time in attempting pregnancy. DeRose's findings show that infertility affects women's identity on multiple levels as support seekers and support givers. They co-construct these support identities "to both help one another make sense of their infertility status in light of the inability to follow the master narrative of motherhood" (p. 59).
There are also studies on online disclosure behaviour in relation to fertility treatments and pregnancy loss. Knoll and Bronstein (2014) observe that women bloggers who have infertility issue self-disclose highly intimate details about their infertility treatments, while Andalibi and Forte (2018) in their study of disclosure of pregnancy loss on social media find that anonymous disclosures on other sites facilitate disclosure on identified sites, such as Facebook. In addition, awareness campaigns encourage women to share about pregnancy loss even when they would not ordinarily do so. Steuber and Solomon (2011) show that aspects of stigma, communication efficacy, and closeness impact infertility-related disclosures. Scholars have identified a connection between the disclosure of fertility related information and the quality of support received in a forum (Steuber and High 2015). Also, Martins, et. al. (2012) observe that the prospective relationship between social support and fertility-related stress is moderated by the decision of disclosing infertility.
Central to the focus of sociological scholars is the construction of communities of committed and supportive TTC forum members, the kind described as the "architecture of commitment" by Ley (2007). This idea of communal bonding online is important to this study because it constitutes the basis for the kinds of discursive practices exhibited in the group. For health professionals, the major concern is the increase in the challenge of medical expertise that TTC discussion boards encourage. This perceived challenge is discursively-motivated through deployment of rhetorical elements and discursive features, making online TTC discussions appropriate data for this study. Existing studies have provided the necessary springboard for the study of stance taking in TTC discussion boards. Beyond identity construction and disclosure behaviour, two issues central to the focus of discourse analysts, the present study probes into how discursive elements are engaged to construct participants' emotions, stances and engagements in the TTC online forums.
Materials and methods
Data for this study were drawn from Nairaland Forum, a discussion board reputed by Alexa Internet to be the most visited website in Nigeria. The forum was created in 2005 and targeted at discussing different topics including politics, health, career, religion, culture, and so forth. The data were taken from a topic generated on the health section of Nairaland titled "Trying to Conceive a Child? TTC", which was started at 3:09pm on Sep 02, 2009 and has been sustained till date, running up to 2937 pages as at the time of doing this research (4th September, 2021). The topic can be found at: https://www.nairaland.com/318334/trying-conceive-child-ttc. The thread was started by Arlington for "women waiting for a child, who have suffered miscarriages, still births and are trying to find alternative ways of having a child". As at 10:56 pm on 4th September, 2021, the topic has been viewed by 4,641,665 people over the years. Arlington's goal was to create a support system for such women until they achieve their goal. The thread was not only sustained for many years, participants have claimed that they have received the needed support and even remained as members after having their children, in order to keep providing support for several other members who are still trying to conceive.
Over the years, members of this community have bonded, sharing their joys, sorrows and collective support.
Since the length of discussion in the thread vary and several topics related to the original one were generated, the corpus was purposely selected from 60 pages comprising 5 pages of the thread per year of its existence and totaling 82,846 words and this constitutes the data analysis for the study. The focus in the posts and comments was participants' discursive construction of their stances and engagement as they build and sustain the community, which they have done for more than twelve years as at the time of conducting this research. Analysis of the data was guided by a combination of socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse analysis and Ken Hyland's model of stance and engagement.
Teun van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse analysis is of the view that discourses are produced and understood in terms of cognitive models and their interpretations are based on shared socio-cultural knowledge. This approach focuses on the interrelationships among discourse, cognition and society and was adopted to guide the interpretation of the data because it connects the discourse structure and social structure through the mental representations of language users as individuals and as social members. The cognitive interface of mental models, knowledge, attitudes and ideologies have their imprints on social interaction and social structures. The online posts elicited from the threads of discussions on TTC forum on Nairaland Forum were interpreted and explained in terms of the underlying socially-shared cognition that went into producing them. This approach is appropriate for the study because the forum function as a community of people bound together with common aspiration of trying to conceive and have babies. Discussions on the forum are guided by the knowledge and understanding of the society as well as attitudes and identities they chose to construct within the social space of their discourse.
Ken Hyland's model of stance and engagement, although originally designed for analyzing how academic writers express their positions, represent themselves, and engage their audiences (Hyland 2005, 176), it has been adapted for analyzing other discourses, especially interactive ones. Stance and engagement refer to interactional features writers draw upon to express their position and connect with readers in discourse. The concept of stance itself has to do with speakers' positioning, attitudes and dispositions towards discourse in which they are engaged. It is the textual 'voice' of a writer and refers to how writers present themselves and convey their judgements, opinions, and commitments (Hyland 2005, 176). For Hyland, stances can be expressed or marked through boosters (expression of confidence and certainty), hedges (expression of doubts and withhold of commitment), attitude markers (writer's affective attitude toward the proposition) and self-mentions (presentation of discoursal self). Engagement, on the other hand, describes how writers bring readers into the discourse, envisaging their responses. Hyland identifies five features of engagement—reader pronoun (acknowledging readers presence through explicit use of pronouns referring to them), personal asides (addressing readers directly by briefly interrupting the argument to offer a comment on what has been said), appeals to shared knowledge (constructing solidarity with readers on common grounds and knowledge shared), directives (instructing the reader to perform an action or to see things in a way determined by the writer) and questions (stimulating involvement of thereby inviting engagement by other participants through questions).
Results and discussion
This section is divided into three sub-sections addressing the major findings from the analysis of the data: cognitive framing of emotion, which reports how emotions are cognitively framed in the discourse; stance features, dealing with participants' attitudes and dispositions towards infertility; and
engagement features showing how participants express relationships in the process of building solidarity, commitment and support in their discussions.
Cognitive framing of emotion
Findings from the data show that narratives on TTC threads are highly emotional and participants cognitively frame their individual and collective emotions through their lexical choices which express their communal commitment and support for one another. The thread from which the data was drawn was started by one Arlington with the following post:
P1 Hello everyone, I wanted to start this for women who are still waiting for a child, who have tried for a long time, have suffered miscarriages, still births and are trying to find alternative ways of having a child.
In our culture it is really difficult to talk about this as people are ashamed or don't know who to trust and are just generally confused. I have suffered 2 miscarriages and i am still on this journey i believe that i will be a mother someday.
We believe in Nigeria after 2 years and no child you have major issues especially from your village but i know that is not always true.
So please come in let us support one another we can pray together, share ideas seek advice and get advice and travel this road together don't suffer in silence don't cry alone anymore let us help each other, until the day we carry our bundle of joy.
The key issues highlighted by this original poster (OP), which later feature all through the discussions over the years are:
(1) TTC could take a long time—characterized by miscarriages and still births.
(2) It is a difficult topic to discuss within the Nigerian socio-cultural context.
(3) TTC couples need support, which they can get through discussion of their common challenge.
Bringing a topic of this nature online seemed a novel practice at the time the thread was started, but over the years of discussion, the forum has become a space for these women to express themselves, gain and disseminate knowledge and attempt to ease their anxieties (Burns 2018). These women with TTC challenge explore the online platforms to take care of what Pendry and Salvatore (2015, 217) refers to as "virtuous circle of caring".
The conceptualization of infertility as JOURNEY which these women have to undertake together in order to arrive at their expected destination of having their own babies is evident in this original post (OP). This cognitive framing of infertility defines the communal bonding and feeling of togetherness of these women as they engage in discussion on the forum. In their attempt to "travel" on this "journey" together, they deployed specific linguistic forms and structures to construct faith, hope, confidence, consolation, empathy, sympathy, endurance, and other qualities they need to sail through the journey. Other posts corroborate this cognitive framing.
P2 Its just so hard to wait since the whole journey is a slow process so we have to give body time
P3 Actually, I am praying to God to help me scale through this problem and succeed so that I can use it to help others who are battling with infertility, cos is not an easy journey and I have been using myself as for experiment so that if u succeed, I will not be afraid to show others the road I went through
P4. I pray your journey to motherhood will be a short one.
In P2 and P3, infertility is described as a journey made uneasy by its a slow process, which the poster of P4 supplicated to be a short one. Prayer, an expression of faith and hope is a common feature in the forum as we can see in P4. The women's narratives in the forum feature their experiences of waiting, miscarriages, still births, irregular periods, ovulation and pregnancies and births.
One of the ways the women create a strong sense of community is through performativity of intimate sociality, emotional closeness and creating online familyhood and sisterhood (Cabalquinto and Soriano 2020). They also construct their common problems through disclosure in order to elicit social support.
P5: Good morning beautiful sisters. It is with heavy heart I come this morning. I'm not happy at all. I did hyteroscopy / laparoscopy last month on 8th precisely to remove adhesion from the uterus & cervix. Balloon was inserted to prevent re adhesion. My menses didn't come last month maybe because of the surgery...
P6: Hello my lovely e-family... Missed you all. I am PREGNANT May God answer everybody swiftly. Amennnnn.
P7: Thank you all my E-sisters for coming out from hibernating mode, don't give room for
depression to take place. I know it's not easy. God'll surely do it for everyone in this forum
P8: My sisters, i feel for all of you because as a woman when it took me only a year to conceive during my time then i know what i went through, talk less of people with few or long years without a baby. Our God is able and nothing is impossible with Him just believe and you shall all see the glory of the Lord. Amen.
From the excerpt above, expressions such as beautiful sisters, e-family and E-sisters and the level of disclosure are indicative of the emotional closeness the forum has fostered among the participants, seeing themselves as sisters in one family and being ready to freely share their moments of sadness as seen in P5 and joy as portrayed in P6 and offering comfort and assurances.
The process of social knowledge construction in online forums generally rely on shared social cognition (knowledge, attitudes, ideologies) and societal structures. Cognitive verbs are verbs that denote all the things that the human mind can do naturally, which include the mental processes, such as thinking, knowing, perceiving, understanding and so forth. Table 1 below shows the frequency of cognitive verbs in the data.
Table 1. Frequency of cognitive verbs in the data
Cognitive verbs Occurrences Percentages
know 53 29.6
feel 26 14.5
hope 35 19.5
imagine 7 3.9
think 24 13.4
believe 16 8.9
wonder 6 3.4
understand 3 1.7
seems 3 1.7
guess 3 1.7
remember 1 0.5
sense 1 0.5
wish 1 0.5
Total 179 100
The typically used verbs from the findings are know (53: 29.6%), hope (35: 19.5%), feel (26: 14.5%), think (24:13.4%) and believe (16: 8.9%). These five cognitive verbs account for 86% of the thirteen cognitive verbs identified in the data. Three cognitive verbs know, hope, and feel constitute about half of all the cognitive verbs used. This is a signal to the fact that one of the major preoccupations in the mental process is the construction of knowledge, hope and emotions. The forum is a space for sharing facts and information that will assist members to make informed decisions about their infertility. While participants freely express their 'feelings' and seek to interpret them based on the experiences of others, they equally express 'hope' in the midst of waiting, disappointment and pain that accompany the waiting period. Below are some of the ways they construct knowledge, hope and feelings in their narratives:
P9: Me, I just keep praying for a miracle, I know it will happen by God's grace
P10: i know someone who had a miscarriage and they ended up damaging one of her tubes
which lead to a serious infection, her only option is IVF now because of one crazy doctor please. i will ask around and see if someone can tell me of anyone.
P11: Sometimes I feel those who God just grant the favour of conceiving at the slightest opportunity don't know how lucky they are. But I believe we too are lucky & favoured as long as HE remains on the Throne.
P12: i feel for you poster and my prayer for you is dat in the nearest future u'll carry your own baby and every stumbling block preventing you 4rm carrying your own child will be destroyed in JESUS name Amen
P13: I have suffered two miscarriages and they have not been able to tell me why, so I keep hoping and praying and finger crossing
P14: just take it easy ok and let's hope it comes soon but if it does not come soon will you go and check?
Knowledge could be constructed to affirm what participants claim to "know" about the Supreme Being and what he has the capacity to do as can be seen in P9. This is an expression of confidence in God and his ability to do what seems impossible to men, often referred to as a "miracle". The modal verb that follows—will—further heightens the semantic import of the affirmation—it is a certainty modal verb that depicts the extent to which the poster is sure of the proposition. On the other hand, the cognitive verb know is also used to introduce evidence as seen in P10. Evidentiality in this sense marks the source of information and the commitment of, or attitude of the interlocutor towards the information, in this case, through the provision of information that indicates the possibility of medical experts complicating infertility challenges.
The cognitive verb feel is one of the sense verbs or verbs of perception which depicts the belief and or impression of the senser in the mental process. In P11, the writer constructs Otherness by viewing members of the out-group as people "God just grant the favour of conceiving at the slightest opportunity" as being "lucky". The poster however quickly rejected stigmatization of her group and placed value on the group identity as "lucky & favoured" persons based on the perception of God as the Ruler over all things. The other use of feel is that of expressing solidarity with another participant— empathy. This expression of empathy is quickly followed with a prayer.
Hope is a constant feature of the TTC discourse. Regardless of the direction the discourse is going, hope is always interjected mainly through encouraging words and prayers and it remains the bedrock of the support system and the therapeutic benefits enjoyed by group members (P13 and P14). Members also play the role of gatekeepers by discouraging any kind of information that has the tendency to dash their hope. For instance, trolls and spammers are quickly cautioned, dismissed, and not allowed to divide the forum as they typically do in other forums. For instance, P15 below is a spam message, which members quickly resisted in P16 and P17.
P15: opeyemi from HEALTH LINK, information is power, we need to get people informed that such an issue is never a spell medically, miscarriage could be caused by many factors one of which could be infection, hormonal in balance in women, wrong lifestyle and un check diet, problem shared is problem solve. ladies in the forum pleased to inform u that we at health link has solution to dat a trusted & tested herbal remedy rich in herbs like [wild yam, red sage, st john's wort, vitex, lady's mantle, chinese angelina skull cap, ginger dandelion and liquorice], you contact us on 08030677717 u will not ve console urselve posting on this forum instead u will all b shearing TESTIMONIES. call now dont wiat (sic) till tomorrow
P16: Classic/opeyemi or whatever is your name, the people here are sincere people who have been of immense help to each other. We've heard a lot about one herbal remedy or the other and we. ops, I want to say thanks but no thanks. If u have anything to sell or market, go to marketing section.
P17: Can you beat that. console yourself posting on this forum? Even if your medicine is very potent, your choice of language portray (sic) you as someone who is very proud and arrogant. We are not living in self pity as your post insinuate, but rather we are encouraging ourselves and to God be the glory we've seen a lot of testimonies here on this thread.
In resisting the spam message, it became necessary for these participants to construct their group identity as well-informed and sincere people, who would not entertain unsolicited advertising and intrusion into their discussion. Members construct the group as a support giving and support seeking one as expressed in P16—"sincere people who have been of immense help to each other" and people who have been "encouraging" themselves (P17). These posts show a dimension of power resistance in the discourse in which the people in the TTC forum resisted an underlying perception of participants as self-consoling and self-pity seekers.
Stance features
Analysis of stance features will be restricted to those of hedges and boosters due to their epistemic and affective value in the kind of discourse in focus and in order to thoroughly address stance in the data within the limited space we have for this paper. Hedging is used when participants are not sure of the acceptance of their propositions or when they are not certain about the veracity of their statement.
P18: I wish you all the best in your quest to conceive. Hopefully, I could give a male perspective. (Not sure of the acceptance)
P19: I feel your pain. However please consider that your last doctor may not have necessarily done anything wrong. Was your miscarriage a missed abortion (empty sac) type? If so, it was likely that the embryo was never viable probably due to chromosomal abnormalities. (Not sure of the veracity)
P20: A lot of times when women miscarry everyone may assume that it is a problem entirely with the woman's body but in some instances, it may be due to poor quality sperm, which may result in a chromosanally non-viable embryo. (Not sure of the veracity)
P21: If i may say dis, i started taking some thianshi products (food supplements) some months back. Effects are: regularized cycle, regularized days of flow, and reduced pain during my period. not experienced dat in ages. (Not sure of the acceptance)
TTC forums are typically populated by females and this goes a long way to determine the kind of topics they discuss. P18 is apparently a post by a male participant who felt the need for a balance in perspectives by bringing in a male angle to the narratives, however, he felt he needed to exercise some caution in doing this. Using the word hopefully to qualify the proposal about to be introduced into the discussion is a way of hedging his view to indicate his unsureness of the veracity. In P19 and P20, even in presenting alternatives to pre-conceived ideas about miscarriages, the participants feel the need to hedge the views to express that they are not sure of the truthfulness of their propositions. The use of the modal verb may to qualify the verbs was meant to provide a balanced perspective, by shifting focus from the typically perceived causes of miscarriage—woman's body and sometimes, doctors' mismanagement. This could have a way of helping TTC women to maintain emotional balance and some kind of assurance and hope in their desire to conceive.
Sometimes, introducing an idea or method in the forum is done in a less assertive and polite way, as can be seen in the use of the expression if I may say this in P21. The idea of tianshi products (herbal food supplements from China) meant to boost people's health has been a subject of controversy, all over the world, therefore the writer needed to cautiously introduce it through that
hedging expression. The expression was able to identify the illocutionary force of the statement that followed as being informative rather than assertive.
Boosters are used when TTC participants want to express their convictions, certainty, assurance and strengthen the illocutionary force of their propositions. The typically used booster in the discussion threads are: actually, really, very, surely, seriously, in fact, definitely, and so forth. Boosters are typically used to construct hope and demonstrate the importance of a participant's proposition, as can be seen in the excerpt below.
P22: Hey everyone, I seriously need a good urologist in Lagos and a reputable fertility hospital that performs IUI/IVF
P23: Hi girls sorry about the silence hope all is well with you i keep on checking this thread to see if we have one good news and am very sure very soon we would have many good news
P24 Pls help me with an advise (sic) if you really know about this cyst of a thing in a pregnant woman and also pray with me cos I can't afford to lose this baby
The adverbial seriously in P22 reflects the mood of the participant and how other participants are expected to take the statement—not lightly. It adds a greater force to the verb need, thereby intensifying the meaning. The use of this intensifier projects the values of the poster, signifying the worth attached to the statement made and the kind of commitment expected of other participants towards the request, that is to recommend "a good urologist in Lagos and a reputable fertility hospital and a reputable hospital that performs IUI/IVF". To further underscore the value being stressed in the proposition, the adjectives good and reputable are deployed to qualify the kind of urologist and hospital anticipated.
The intensifiers, very and really used in P23 and P24 are used to qualify the mood of a participant in terms of certainty. By combining very with the adjective of conviction, sure, temporal adverb soon, the proposition is further strengthened. There is an assumption that many people on the forum are non-medical people, who could considerably understand fertility issues based on their experiences and this is the basis for soliciting for advice and prayer in P24.
Engagement features
Engagement according to Hyland (2005, 176) indicates the recognition of the other participants and pulling them along in the discourse in order to focus their attention as discourse participants. Analyzing all features of engagement in an online dialogic discourse of this nature alongside other discursive features in a single research paper can be a daunting exercise if limitations are not clearly set. Due to this, the analysis has been restricted to questions and directives, which are major strategies in the mood system for rhetorically constructing engagement in dialogic discussions. These two features expect some kind of response from other discourse participants—verbal, non-verbal and cognitive responses. Below are some questions used for engagement:
P25: Do you ladies know of any other tests to check the cause of infertility? God bless.
P26: Seems I don't ovulate again, can I take clomid or is their (sic) other thing I can take to boost ovulation without doctor's recommendation?
P27: @abiop, what tests have you done? and what were the results? Have you done a semen analysis?
P28: I have read so much about spinach and brocholli. Pls, where can I get them in Lagos, from herb sellers?
Although questions are typically used to elicit verbal responses, they are used in different ways as can be seen in the excerpts 25 to 27. Since the forum is considered as a space for participants' search for knowledge on how to achieve their ultimate goal of conception and sustenance of pregnancy as well as successful delivery of their babies, participants engaged themselves with a lot of questions, mostly polar and Wh-questions. These questions were either directed to a specific participant—abiop, as seen in P27, or all the participants (as in P25, P26 and P28). Questions can range from those that have general focus as we have in P25 (cause of infertility) to specific ones such as P26 (what to use to boost ovulation). Findings showed that Wh-questions were predominantly used in the forum. Wh-questions, which are regarded as open questions, typically allow the answers to be elaborate, unlike the Yes/No questions, to which answers are either a "yes" or a "no". Elaborate information is generally desired in TTC forum and since Wh-questions favour them, they naturally predominate. The use of questions in discourse has implications on role relationship because they presuppose that some participants, by virtue of their experience, are probably more knowledgeable on the discourse topic (see P27). As the questions engage such participants, they help in the co-construction of the infertility experience, thereby leading to the achievement of the goal of the discourse.
Directives are the most frequent devices used to initiate reader participation in an interactional discourse. They instruct other participants to perform an action or to see things in a way determined by a participant. For the participants in TTC online forum, the support of a community of like-minded people who might have gone through similar experiences and have achieved their desire is very important. Such participants are empowered to give directives to other participants less experienced on how to go about achieving their desire to conceive.
P29: Try a reputable University Teaching Hospital. Good luck.
P30: I stumbled on an information on how to give birth to the child of your choice. Check it up at www.perfectsdate
P31: I know Government hospitals are good but there is a little frustration in that sector. Try and look for a Doctor who has all your files in one place, and has an idea about what tests have been done...
P32: It is well dear, do whatever u can and leave the rest to God.
Directives are not just imperatives, they could also be requests, invitations and offers. The common feature of directives is that they carry the authority of the writer in specifying how other participants should feature in or outside the discourse. A directive could be a recommendation, directing other participant to certain physical places or persons, as in P29 (a reputable Teaching Hospital) and P31 (Government hospitals), a virtual source, as in P30 (www.perfectdate), or demanding a religious perception of issues, as in P32 (leave the rest to God). Qualitative questions and directives are very useful and highly desired by participants in TTC boards to guide them in realizing their goals of being fertile, getting pregnant, having safe delivery.
Conclusion
This study has revealed that online TTC forums are sites for women dealing with issues of fertility to emote their feelings, attitudes, dispositions as well as construct their identities as they engage in interactional discourse. Their discussions are characterized by extreme disclosures, the kinds that do not feature in other types of online forums. Participants have the feelings of attachment, loyalty, and obligation toward one another and their community and they cognitively frame their emotions to express these feelings towards one another. Epistemic and affective stances are expressed through the use of hedges and boosters indicating the extent of certainty and the illocutionary force of propositions. The strategies in the mood system for inviting engagement of other participants were illustrated with questions and directives. These strategies assist the participants to foster good support system in which they are able to co-construction the infertility experience that leads to the achievement of the ultimate goal of the community—conception and safe delivery. By these findings, this study has significantly explicated the under-explored aspects of online rhetorical practices of TTC subjects in Nigeria.
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