A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SOCIAL MEDIA DISCOURSE IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK: LINGUISTIC AND PRAGMATIC FEATURES
Abstract
The rapid development of social networking platforms has significantly transformed contemporary communication and has given rise to new forms of discourse that differ from traditional written and spoken communication. Social media discourse is characterized by informality, brevity, interactivity, multimodality, linguistic creativity, and the rapid exchange of information and opinions. The present study examines the linguistic and pragmatic characteristics of social media discourse in English and Uzbek from a comparative perspective. The research focuses on the ways in which users of the two languages employ lexical, grammatical, pragmatic, and multimodal resources to construct meaning and negotiate interpersonal relationships in digital environments. Particular attention is paid to abbreviations, colloquial vocabulary, slang, code-switching, pragmatic markers, speech acts, evaluative expressions, politeness strategies, emojis, hashtags, and other digital discourse markers. The study applies a qualitative comparative approach informed by computer-mediated discourse analysis, discourse analysis, and linguistic pragmatics. The analysis demonstrates that English and Uzbek social media discourse share several global characteristics, including informality, expressive language, conversationalization, abbreviated forms, and extensive use of multimodal resources. At the same time, differences can be observed in the realization of politeness, forms of address, code-switching practices, evaluative expressions, and culturally determined communicative strategies. The findings suggest that social media should be regarded not merely as a technological environment but as a dynamic linguistic space in which language users continuously adapt conventional communicative resources to new social and technological conditions.
Keywords
social media discourse, digital discourse, linguistic features, pragmatic features, English, Uzbek, computer-mediated communication, multimodality, code-switching, pragmatics.How to Cite
References
Abduganiyeva, M. (2025). Multimodal communication in social media: A comparative analysis of English and Uzbek Instagram/Facebook discourse. Mental Enlightenment Scientific-Methodological Journal, 6(08), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.37547/mesmj-V6-I8-01 (Mental Journal)
Androutsopoulos, J. (2015). Negotiating authenticities in mediatized times. Discourse, Context & Media, 8, 74–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2015.06.003
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085
Cunningham, D. J. (2023). Computer-mediated communication and pragmatics. In C. A. Chapelle, N. Taguchi, & D. Kádár (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0942.pub2(Wiley Online Library)
Crystal, D. (2011). Internet linguistics: A student guide. Routledge.
Herring, S. C. (2004). Computer-mediated discourse analysis: An approach to researching online behavior. In S. A. Barab, R. Kling, & J. H. Gray (Eds.), Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning (pp. 338–376). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511805080.016
Hyland, K. (2017). Metadiscourse: What is it and where is it going? Journal of Pragmatics, 113, 16–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.007
Lombart, E. (2023). Opinion events: Types and opinion markers in English social media discourse. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 19(2), 447–481. https://doi.org/10.1515/lpp-2023-0022 (researchportal.unamur.be)
Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge University Press.
Simungala, G., Jimaima, H., & Nkhatab, L. (2025). Social media discourses as multimodal assemblages. Social Semiotics, 35, 229–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2025.2511745 (DOI)
Yus, F. (2017). Pragmatics of social media. De Gruyter Mouton. (De Gruyter Brill)
Yus, F. (2018). The interface between pragmatics and internet-mediated communication: Applications, extensions and adjustments. In C. Ilie & N. R. Norrick (Eds.), Pragmatics and its Interfaces (pp. 267–290). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.294.12yus (Benjamins)
Zappavigna, M. (2011). Ambient affiliation: A linguistic perspective on Twitter. New Media & Society, 13(5), 788–806. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444810385097
Zappavigna, M. (2012). Discourse of Twitter and social media: How we use language to create affiliation on the web. Bloomsbury Academic.
Zappavigna, M. (2017). Searchable talk: The linguistic functions of hashtags. Social Semiotics, 27(3), 274291. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2016.1227007
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Gulshan Aliyeva
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
