THE LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF PERSONAL IDENTITY IN INTERNET DISCOURSE

Abstract

The rapid development of digital communication has transformed the ways individuals construct and express their identities. Unlike traditional face-to-face communication, Internet discourse provides users with various linguistic resources through which they create, negotiate, and reconstruct personal identities in accordance with communicative goals, social contexts, and audience expectations. This study examines the linguistic construction of personal identity in Internet discourse from sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical perspectives. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of Gee's discourse theory and Bucholtz and Hall's sociocultural linguistic model of identity, the article argues that identity is not a fixed personal attribute but an interactional accomplishment emerging through language use. The findings demonstrate that lexical, pragmatic, stylistic, and discourse-level resources collectively function as mechanisms for constructing online identities. The study contributes to contemporary Internet discourse research by proposing an integrated framework for analysing identity construction through language.