Digital Identity Construction through Hashtags, Emoji, and Language Choice on Social Media: A Sociolinguistic Literature Review

Abstract

This study aims to examine how hashtags, emoji, and language choice contribute to digital identity construction on social media and how these resources interact in digitally mediated discourse. An integrative literature review was employed to synthesize verifiable empirical studies published primarily between 2021 and 2026, while selected foundational works were retained as theoretical references. The literature was identified through academic search engines, journal portals, publisher websites, and DOI records using keywords related to hashtags, emoji, language choice, code-switching, translanguaging, affiliation, identity, and social media. The selected studies were analyzed through data extraction, thematic coding, cross-study comparison, and interpretive synthesis. The findings reveal four main patterns. Hashtags function as resources for affiliation, collective positioning, and identity; emoji index stance, affect, alignment, and interpersonal identity; language choice and multilingual practices negotiate local, global, generational, and plurilingual identities; and these resources increasingly operate as a multimodal configuration shaped by audiences and platform affordances. Based on these findings, this study proposes the concept of a digital identity repertoire, defined as a dynamic configuration of linguistic, semiotic, and platform resources mobilized to construct persona, stance, positioning, affiliation, and belonging. This framework provides a sociolinguistic basis for future empirical research on multilingual identity in platform-mediated communication.