Digital Discourse: Linguistic Characteristics (Based on Social Media Texts)

The article examines digital discourse as a new direction in discourse studies. The aim of the research is to determine the linguistic characteristics of digital discourse. Accordingly, the main focus of the article is discourse studies, and its core idea is that discourse carried out in the Internet space belongs to digital discourse and possesses its own specific linguistic features. Digital discourse is a term that encompasses all forms of linguistic communication on the Internet, including websites, blogs, and social media posts. In the present article, the linguistic characteristics of digital discourse were identified through the analysis of materials from the social networks Instagram, Facebook, and Threads, as well as the style of digital communication. The scientific significance of the work lies in the fact that the research findings contribute new conclusions to the theory of discourse studies; its practical significance is determined by the applicability of the proposed model of discourse analysis of social media materials to other studies in this field. The research methodology consists of lexical-semantic and discourse analysis methods used in examining materials that demonstrate the language use and stylistic features of participants in digital discourse on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads. The main research findings and analysis show that: 1) the linguistic characteristics of digital discourse are primarily distinguished by the use of special symbolic signs, such as #hashtags, emojis, and post background marking (cover); 2) the lexical and grammatical features of digital discourse include abbreviations, inversion, word elongation, omission of letters, code-mixing, etc. The conclusions of the study indicate that digital discourse is a type of speech activity characterized by specific linguistic features, implemented interactively in the Internet space, having a significant impact on society, and represented in digital text form. The value of the conducted research is defined by its contribution to the development of the metalanguage of discourse studies (digital discourse, digital text, etc.). The practical significance of the results lies in their potential application in linguistic research to analyze the features of language usage and communicative styles in digital discourse, as well as their impact on cultural processes and social significance.

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