Of Pumpkin Spice Lattes, Hamplanets, and Fatspeak: The venting genre as support and subversion on Reddit's r/FatPeopleStorie

Ten posts from the Reddit community Fat People Stories (/r/fatpeoplestories) and their corresponding comment sections comprise an analytical corpus of 45,867 words. Using both Askehave and Nielsen's (2005) two-dimensional model for genre analysis and Bax's (2011) heuristic for discourse analysis, the corpus is examined through these lenses to determine the various move structures and rhetorical strategies that constitute the genre of venting and, more specifically, the communicative purpose of this genre in the Fat People Stories Community. This study is then able to forward a definition of venting as its own genre distinct from its frequent conflation with ranting in the existing literature to date. Additionaly, as health and body image remains a contentious and controversial topic, the functions of venting within the Fat People Stories community has implications for discourse surrounding the obesity epidemic and public health as a whole.