Digital Expressions of Grief and Mourning between Music, Language and Speechlessness

Abstract

A variety of music videos are available on the video platform YouTube, many of which can be commented on. This paper focuses on a certain type of commentary that links a piece of music with memories of deceased relatives or friends. For some users, listening to particular pieces of music consciously, after the experience of a personal loss, appears to be a self-chosen form of processing emotions, which may then be shared anonymously with others in the comment section. These forms of remembrance in turn often garner responses in the anonymity of the comment section voicing sympathy, empathy or one’s own memories. The paper presents linguistic patterns of this digital mourning and the chosen linguistic forms of reactions. This qualitative analysis draws on the comment section of music videos on YouTube, followed by a methodological discussion of the role of music in this »multimodal ensemble« (Stöckl 2019, p. 60) with respect to emotions.