Researches have shown that individuals are now able to construct their identities as “personal brand” (Manning 2010, Page 2012, Gershon 2014, Dayter et al, 2016) and present themselves with chosen capabilities, on their personal profiles.
Self-presentation in any communication situation aims towards desired enhancement of image of the discourse producer, and can thus be seen as positive disclosure of the discourse producer for the discourse recipient.
The article draws on insight from linguistic landscaping (Landry, R., & Bourhis, R., 1997) and socio-pragmatics to explore how language data as used in Facebook etc. considering them as case study can illuminate age related variation present in positive self-presentation in the widest variety of communicative contexts. Besides, the study posits that this type of primary agentive behaviour towards seeking credibility as one of the major concerns of the social media phenomenon, especially for young girls and women. The investigation centres on the creativity required to develop the topics of interest that women use for self-presentation and how these differ contextually from the ones used by younger girls in their virtual community.
Therefore, the establishment of positive self-image has sociological functions which will hopefully contribute in paving the way to the comprehensive description about what the typical topics and characteristics of self-presentation are in this hitherto neglected communicative activity and will demonstrate that self-presentation is an integral, frequent socio-cultural element of interaction based on the familiar social structures of India.
References
Dayter, D. (2016). Discursive self in microblogging: Speech acts, stories and self-praise. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Dayter, D. & Mühleisen, S. (2016). Telling stories about self in Digital Contexts: Same, same, but Different?. Open Linguistics, 2(1). Retrieved 12 Aug. 2017, from doi:10.1515/opli-2016-0030
Gershon, I. (2014). Selling yourself in the United States. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 37(2), 281-295.
Manning, P.(2010). The semiotics of brand. Annual Review of Anthropology 39(1): 33-49.
Landry, R., & Bourhis, R. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 19(1), 23-49. doi: 10.1177/0261927X970161001
Page, R. (2012). The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: The role of hashtags. Discourse & Communication 6(2): 181-201.
