Multilingual Identity Construction in Pakistani Instagram Discourse: An SFL and Emoji-Based Analysis

Abstract

The rapid growth of digital social networks has transformed online platforms into significant spaces for identity construction and negotiation. This study investigates how Pakistani Instagram users construct social, emotional, and ideological identities through language, emojis, and multilingual digital practices. The study is limited to Instagram comments collected from selected Pakistani social media posts. A qualitative descriptive-analytic approach was employed to analyse approximately 115 Instagram comments from ten purposively selected posts on relationships, politics, social issues, entertainment, and beauty standards. The analysis was guided by Halliday's (1993) Systemic Functional Linguistics and Dresner and Herring's (2010) functional perspective on emojis. The findings reveal that users strategically employ evaluative language, stance-taking, emojis, code-mixing, and lexical borrowing to negotiate multiple identities in online interaction. Emojis function as meaningful pragmatic resources rather than merely decorative symbols. The study highlights the multimodal and multilingual nature of Pakistani Instagram discourse and recommends further research using larger datasets and multiple social media platforms.