Linguistic Identity Construction in Online Spaces: A Critical Literature Review

By Xhiljola ABDIHOXHA, Dritan IDRIZI

Abstract
Digital communication environments have fundamentally reconfigured the relationship between language and identity, yet the theoretical and empirical frameworks governing this intersection remain fragmented and geographically narrow. The aim of this paper is to examine how individuals construct, negotiate, and perform linguistic identities across digital platforms, synthesizing scholarship from sociolinguistics, digital discourse analysis, and communication studies. The review’s original contribution lies in integrating these three strands within a single critical synthesis, with particular emphasis on how platform architectures and algorithmic systems shape linguistic visibility, an integration that the existing literature has not yet undertaken systematically. The methodology of this paper is a thematic analysis of peer-reviewed studies, organized around four thematic axes: code-switching as identity performance, self-presentation on social media, hybrid linguistic identities under globalization, and algorithmic mediation of online communication. The analysis is theoretically grounded in Goffman’s dramaturgical model and Bucholtz and Hall’s identity principles framework. Three gaps emerge consistently across the reviewed literature: studies remain heavily skewed toward Western, English-dominant contexts; most draw on data from a single platform; and longitudinal work is strikingly rare. Together, these limitations make it difficult for the field to capture how digital identity shifts and evolves across different cultural settings. This review addresses these shortcomings by offering a critical synthesis that brings algorithmic influence to the foreground, an area that has received far less theoretical attention than it deserves. It also makes a case for research approaches that are more integrative, cross-cultural, and multi-platform in scope. The implications extend beyond theory, touching on how platforms are designed, how online communication is governed, and how digital literacy is taught.

Keywords: digital identity; online code-switching; sociolinguistics; identity performance; digital discourse; hybrid linguistic identity