Towards a characterization of adolescents’ cyberlanguage: the case of multimodality on Facebook

Abstract

This article addresses an ongoing doctoral research that delves into the online interaction of Argentinean adolescents on Facebook. The study explores users’ linguistic-discursive production from three distinctive regions of Argentina: Buenos Aires, Córdoba and San Carlos de Bariloche. In relation to the construction of their online identity inside the peer group, we have focused on the multimodality present in these adolescents’ digital communication, especially the bond between pictures and text. The analysis studies 1560 messages posted on their Facebook wall during April 2012. The corpus comprises posts produced by 91 adolescents (45 males and 46 females). Facebook users had already posted those messages when they were asked (and accepted) to take part in the study (i. e., December 2015). The analysis (qualitative and quantitative) displays partial results, which are significant regarding gender and location, and show evidence of similar behavior regarding the way and purpose of their communication.