Language and Positive Identity Reconstruction: A Study of Nairaland and Facebook

Abstract

Language is a source of identity. A language may help to create a community of people who belong to a 
particular social group. So, there is a strong correlation between language and identity. The internet and 
cyberspace have created new vistas of interactive fora for real-time conversations among individuals of 
different age brackets, who are culturally and geographically dispersed. They post and participate in 
written conversations, which combine speech, writing and online practices.It is also pertinent to note 
that age identities are also shaped by media presentations. Thus, the study examines the connection 
between language and identity in the Nigerian cyberspace, with emphasis on Facebook and Nairaland. 
The theoretical perspective employed is a hybrid of the performativity and symbolic interactionism. 
Purposively sampled extracts of conversations got from Nairaland and Facebook constitute the data for 
the study. The authors demonstrate using the theories, that people project their identities through age, 
gender and Nigerian pidgin. The analysis shows that identities are built in such spacial environments 
through social interaction and dialogical processes. It is concluded that cyber identities are fluid in 
representations, affirming that cyber-identity is different from physical identity, hence Interactants 
construct new psychosocial identities, along ethnocultural lines.