WORDS, WORLDS, AND WAYS OF MEANING: A LINGUISTIC STUDY OF IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN DIGITAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

Digital communication has transformed the ways individuals interact, express themselves, and construct identities through language. Furthermore, online platforms have expanded meaning-making beyond written text by incorporating hashtags, emoji’s, code-switching, images, and other multimodal resources. However, the linguistic processes through which these digital features shape identity remain insufficiently explored, particularly from a comprehensive discourse-based perspective. Therefore, this study examines how linguistic strategies and meaning-making practices contribute to identity construction in digital discourse and investigates how digital linguistic features represent social and cultural identities. An interpretivist-constructivist philosophy and a qualitative research approach were adopted to achieve these objectives. Moreover, digital discourse analysis was integrated with multimodal discourse analysis to examine publicly available online texts selected through purposive sampling. The data were analyzed through thematic discourse analysis, supported by Sociocultural Linguistic Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Multimodality Theory. The findings revealed that identity was continuously constructed and negotiated through linguistic choices, including word selection, code-switching, hashtags, emoji’s, and multimodal expressions. Additionally, digital discourse functioned as a dynamic space where users represented personal, cultural, professional, and social identities while adapting their language to different audiences and contexts. The study has contributed to the growing field of digital linguistics by demonstrating that language operates not merely as a communication tool but also as a powerful mechanism for constructing identities and social realities in online environments. Finally, it is recommended that future research investigate multilingual digital discourse across diverse cultural settings and combine qualitative linguistic analysis with corpus-based methods to provide broader empirical insights into identity construction in digital communication.