Psychotherapeutic discourse in problematizing transnational identities in computer-mediated interaction: Refusals to be ‘diagnosed’

The chapter focuses on the complexity of transnational belonging and on the diversity of the discursive and semiotic resources through which it is constructed in the computer-mediated Russian-speaking social space, Rusforum.
The study connects the matters of transnational (dis)identification and subjectivation with the concerns and methods of socio-semiotics and interactional linguistics in order to reveal how the actors both mobilize the expert authority of psy discourse and practices and render themselves the freedom to not accept a particular type of relationship with the transnational selves which this authority offers.
Through this examination, I take a critical stance towards the technologies of transnational identification that construct transnational living as deviant and inherently unsound. At the same time, I highlight the discursive acts of resistance to problematizing transnational belonging, which take place in social media environments.
Keywords: computer-mediated communication, social-semiotic discourse analysis, identity, transnational subjectivity, subjectivation