International Journal of English Linguistics; Vol. 9, No. 5; 2019 ISSN 1923-869X E-ISSN 1923-8703 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 217 ‘It Is Time to Operate Like a Woman’: A Corpus Based Study of Representation of Women in STEM Fields in Social Media Reem Alkhammash 1 1 English Language Department, University College, Taraba, Taif University, Saudi Arabia Correspondence: Reem Alkhammash, English Language Department, University College Tarabah, Taif University, Taif 21974, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: reem.alkhammash@gmail.com Received: May 27, 2019 Accepted: June 20, 2019 Online Published: August 26, 2019 doi:10.5539/ijel.v9n5p217 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n5p217 Abstract This study explores the discourse of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics or medicine (STEM) fields produced by Twitter users on social media, with a particular focus on language usage and function in this discourse. The exploration of the women in STEM discourse was achieved by collecting a body of tweets using popular hashtags addressing women in STEM from the last week of October 2017. Following a corpus-based approach, this study analyzes the most frequent evaluative adjectives and 4-grams. Results from the analysis of evaluative adjectives show that Twitter users represent women in STEM fields positively by using positive adjectives such as great, amazing, inspirational etc. Furthermore, the analysis of the most frequent 4-grams reveals that Twitter users employ hashtags such as #ilooklikeasurgeon and #womeninSTEM to promote the work of women in STEM fields, show their appreciation of women working and studying in STEM and challenge prevalent gender stereotypes of STEM professions. It was found that the production of women in STEM discourse by most Twitter users has contributed to increasing the strength of women in the STEM community in social media, evidenced by their practices of advocacy, networking and challenging gender biases online. The discourse of women in STEM in social media is an example of discursive activism that focuses on the larger dialogue of women in STEM and highlights dominant forms of sexism and gendered stereotypes of women’s work in male dominated professions. Keywords: corpus-based, discourse analysis, discursive activism, gender stereotypes, language and gender, social media, women in STEM 1. Introduction 1.1 Introduce the Problem Hashtag activism and digital feminism have emerged recently on social media platforms to raise awareness, build allegiances, resist stereotypes and offer solidarity for women (See for reference Konnelly [2015] and Everett [2018]). Twitter provides a supportive platform for women working in STEM fields via participation in specific hashtags. Such active participation in STEM hashtags forms a diversity campaign to encourage more girls to be involved in STEM contests or to be enrolled in STEM courses. The status, opportunities and challenges for women in STEM is worthy of being studied from a discourse analysis perspective in order to find out more about the nuances of women’s experiences of working in STEM fields (Note 1). In line with previous arguments, this study contributes to the recent body of research investigating the ways social media is used to support women’s scholarships and professional practice in STEM fields. The focus of this study is to investigate the language surrounding women in STEM on Twitter by closely analyzing how Twitter users discursively construct the status, challenges and opportunities for women studying or working in STEM fields. The current study contributes to this literature. In the following sections, I start by providing background information on social media and women’s activism. I follow that with giving a description of theoretical perspectives adopted in this study and discuss the data and method of analysis that has been utilized. Finally, the results will be presented and discussed. 1.2 Social Media and Women’s Activism Discourse Research supports that women’s activism in Twitter constitutes a new form of resistance that assists in increasing awareness of advocacy efforts (Konnelly, 2015). In analyzing affiliations, language used and contexts from