The social network characteristics and the possibilities of expression open by them

Abstract

The social media language represents one of those phenomena that triggers the most interest among researchers of the current sociolinguistics, because of its innovative character and speed of adapting to each platform that Web 2.0 provides. Because the youths feel the need to constantly affirm their identity, it seems conspicuous the reason why it’s this social group that experiences the most intense impulse towards the use of all technological tools available in order to attain that objective. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are three of the social networking sites that provide youths with the most possibilities to express themselves in a creative way, through the creation of conversation groups, the spread of interesting and catchy information and news, and the posting of photos. The aim of this paper is to present the way in which the general characteristics of the online language vary according to the social network that is used, by employing samples of language that belong to the personal profiles of some users, to distinct groups of conversation and to the pages of some of the Spanish personalities that are available on these three platforms.

Keywords: social networking site, youth, language, identity, sociolinguistics