Linguistic Variations In Social Media And The Digital Environment: A Study On Contemporary Language Practices
Keywords:
digital communication, social media, language variation, emoji, code-switching, digital linguistics.Abstract
The rapid expansion of social media platforms and the digital communication sphere has significantly transformed contemporary language use, particularly in multilingual societies. This study investigates how linguistic practices manifest and evolve on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram, focusing on phenomena such as abbreviations, informal orthography, emoji substitution, code-switching, and transliteration. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach, the research analyzes over 1,000 public user posts and incorporates survey data from 150 active social media users in Uzbekistan. The results reveal a dynamic hybridization of language, driven by technological affordances, platform-specific norms, and users’ social identities. Informal expressions, multilingual blending, and creative spellings emerge as defining features of digital discourse, reflecting a broader shift in communication behavior across generational and linguistic lines. These findings contribute to the growing field of digital sociolinguistics and carry important implications for language education, discourse analysis, and digital media literacy in a rapidly globalizing context.
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