DIGITAL NARRATIVES AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN POSTMODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/hgyz5007Keywords:
Digital narratives, Identity construction Postmodern literature, Discourse analysis, SociolinguisticsAbstract
The present study explores the process of creating identity in digital narratives from the perspective of postmodern English literature by analysing the relation between the structure of the narrative and the linguistic elements in digital narratives. In the digital age, the notion of identity is now articulated as performative, fragmented and fluid, rather than stable and fixed, with digital mediums like social media narratives, interactive fiction, and multimodal texts emerging as new forms of digital storytelling. In this study, adopting a mixed method approach the research integrates quantitative corpus-based analysis and qualitative discourse analysis to analyze the pattern of identity representation within a structured corpus of 1000 instances of narratives. Some of the important factors analyzed are: type of the story, type of identity, language characteristics, fragmentation, interactivity, use of pronouns, and sentiment. The results show that the most prevalent identities are fluid and fractured, and that narrative discontinuity and dynamic linguistic expression are high. The use of pronouns in particular, with a particular emphasis on first- and second-person pronouns, underscores the interactive and self-referential aspects of identity construction; code switching and intertextuality are also features that help to shape hybrid identity formation. The study overall brings empirical evidence for the postmodern theories of identity and is a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary discourses of literature, sociolinguistics, and digital discourse studies by providing a detailed account of the ways in which identity is constructed in digital stories in the present.
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