Distorted Echoes of Narcissus: A Corpus-Based Study of Concept Creep in the Representation of Narcissistic Personality Disorder on TikTok

ABSTRACTMass media play a key role in shaping societal behaviours, perceptions, and attitudes (Happer & Philo,2013), and with the introduction of computer-mediated communication, social media have become aprimary driver of lexical change (Eisenstein et al., 2014).With the rise of “therapy-speak,” defined as thenormalization of medical terminology in everyday discourse (Isern-Mas & Almagro, 2025), and “conceptcreep,” understood as the expansion of medical and harm-related concepts to include milder instancesor to be applied beyond their original scope of use (Haslam, 2016), the internet is a particularly potentenvironment for the diffusion and semantic transformation of medical terminology. These phenomenaare linked to a broader process of psychiatrization, reflected in the growing use of psychiatricterminology to interpret everyday experiences and problems (Haslam et al., 2021b). Although conceptcreep has been primarily examined in psychology and sociology, its linguistic aspect in online discourserequires further research. The process of concept creep can be regarded as a form hyperbolization andsemantic extension.This study examines the use and meaning of the terms “narcissist” and “narcissistic” on the TikTokplatform. It builds on previous research examining public perceptions of narcissistic personality disorder(NPD) (Hengartner et al., 2026) by extending the analysis to social media discourse. The study consists ofa corpus-based analysis of TikTok video transcripts and their attached descriptions. A Python script wasused to scrape videos from 2024 to 2025, collecting those that contained the hashtags #narcissist and#narcissistic in their descriptions. The study addresses two research questions: (1) How are NPD-relatedterms used on TikTok? (2) How does this usage modify their prototypical meanings? The analysisexamines their context of use and compares findings with ICD-11 and DSM-5 TR definitions. Theexpected results indicate semantic broadening in the analysed terminology, contributing a linguisticperspective of psychiatrization and concept creep in online discourse.Keywords: concept creep, semantic change, psychiatrization, social media, TikTok ReferencesAberra, D. (2006). Prototype theory in cognitive linguistics. URL: https://www. researchgate. net/publica-tion/267512473_Prototype_Theoiy_in_Cognitive_Linguistics(accessed 14.12. 2024).American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.978089042578Beeker, T., Mills, C., Bhugra, D., Meerman, S. T., Thoma, S., Heinze, M., & Von Peter, S. (2021). Psychiatrization of Society: a Conceptual framework and call fortransdisciplinary research. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 645556. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.645556Bellomare, M., Genova, V. G., & Miano, P. (2024). Gaslighting exposure during Emerging Adulthood: Personality traits and vulnerability paths. International Journal ofPsychological Research, 17(1), 29–39. https://doi.org/10.21500/20112084.6306Corzine, A., & Roy, A. (2024). Inside the black mirror: current perspectives on the role of social media in mental illness self-diagnosis. Discover Psychology, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-024-00152-3Haslam, N. (2016). Concept Creep: Psychology’s expanding concepts of harm and pathology. Psychological Inquiry, 27(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840x.2016.1082418Haslam, N., Dakin, B. C., Fabiano, F., McGrath, M. J., Rhee, J., Vylomova, E., Weaving, M., & Wheeler, M. A. (2020b). Harm inflation: Making sense of concept creep.European Review of Social Psychology, 31(1), 254–286. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2020.1796080Haslam, N., Tse, J. S. Y., & De Deyne, S. (2021b). Concept creep and psychiatrization. Frontiers in Sociology, 6, 806147. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.806147Isern-Mas, C., & Almagro, M. (2025). Unmasking therapy-speak. Metamedicine, 46(6), 465–489. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-025-09730-5Sweetser, E. E. (1988). Grammaticalization and Semantic Bleaching. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 14, 389. https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v14i0.1774Traugott, E. C. (2016). Semantic change. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.323World Health Organization. (2019). International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (11th ed.). https://icd.who.int/