Grief discourse in online support forums following miscarriage: A cross-cultural rhetorical move analysis of French...

This study investigates what makes initial messages to online grief forums successful through a rhetorical move analysis of 165 messages following miscarriage (71 in French, 94 in Mandarin). Six moves are identified, four shared across both corpora, suggesting core membership-brokering strategies operate cross-culturally. Significant differences emerged in the steps through which these moves are realized. French messages demonstrated structured openings combining community and fetal greetings with background narration, reflecting norms of formality and social reciprocity, alongside a step of physical weakness in which loss is framed as bodily failure. Mandarin messages showed no equivalent greeting convention, foregrounding emotional expression as the dominant structural feature. A sixth move, "Addressing the lost child," operates exclusively in the Mandarin data, addressing the child as a continuing presence accompanied by self-blame and apology. These findings demonstrate that effective grief support requires attentiveness to the relational and cultural frameworks through which communities express loss.