HYBRID DIGITAL IDENTITIES: HOW ENGLISH AND LOCAL LANGUAGES CO-CREATE CROSS-CULTURAL YOUTH COMMUNICATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MIANWALI

Abstract

This study scrutinizes the ways through which undergraduate and postgraduate students of University of Mianwali interact on official social media e.g Facebook by using multiple languages at the same time. Their language usage is not merely a linguistic phenomenon but also a social process. The process of using amalgamated languages produces a hybrid personality of a person. This research mainly focuses on how language use affects students’ personality on some digital platformms specifically Facebook . In addition, this study follows qualitative research methodology in order to get the deeper insight. The research will collect 100 facebook comments from official page with the help of purposive sampling technique of data collection. By keeping in view the ethics of research data will be extracted from public comments, there will be no harm to the privacy of an individual. This research uses CAT (communication accommodation theory as a theoretical framework to detect the process of modification of students' language according to variation in context. Data is displayed and analysed with the help coding sheets. The main goal of this study is to reveal how students use English language for modernity, aspiration and global belonging and deliberately utilizes local languages like Saraiki and Urdu for the sake of social bonding and intimacy. This study aims to show that students’ digital communication is neither purely global nor utterly local but instead a hybrid form of interaction that reflects their complex cross-cultural personalities in a digital web of the universe