Language Mask of a Social Network User as a Tool for Constructing a Multiple Identity

DOI https://doi.org/10.17721/2522-1272.2021.78.3

UDC 007:316.61

Language Mask of a Social Network User
as a Tool for Constructing a Multiple Identity

Hanna Sukharevska, PhD (social communications) National University of Water and Environmental Engineering 11 Soborna St., Rivne city, 33028, Ukraine

ABSTRACT

The main objective of the article is to analyse significance of the language mask for communications practices in social networks, its role in transformation of personal identity under the influence of network communication. In the study, we applied sociocultural and psycholinguistic analysis in the context of an interdisciplinary approach, as a synthesis of knowledge of social communication, psycholinguistics and cultural theory. In addition, critical analysis of media narratives and typology method have become an important toolkit. Summing up the study results, it should be noted that fulfilment of the universal human need for self-expression in anonymous conditions of network communication leads to a variety of different narrative masks in virtual discourse, which makes it difficult to create their unambiguous unified typology. However, it can be stated that creation of a linguistic mask is one of the important tools for constructing the identity of the author, who simultaneously appears as a marker of this identity. Today the existing typology of language strategies (event, analytical and artistic), in our opinion, should be supplemented by a visually oriented strategy, which is associated with the tendency of minimization of text formats and an increase of emphasis on the visual component. It is difficult to identify a separate strategy among ones that dominate in the modern network space, rather it is hybridity and a mixture of different strategies that generally corresponds to postmodern paradigm. In that regard, the interest in the phenomenon of multiple identity, when the network user creates not one but many language masks, becomes topical and relevant to the contemporary postmodern areas of research (actor-network theory). In this sense, identification of discursive levels (psychological, communication, philological) as meaningful discursive embodiments of narrative masks is relevant for future analysis, which different options of interaction can be used by the author to build a particular mask.

KEYWORDS: network communication; language mask; language strategy; identity; multiple identity.

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