SWITCHING SELVES ONLINE:PASHTO-ENGLISH BILINGUALISM,IDENTITY, AND EXPRESSION IN PAKISTAN’S DIGITAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

The language in modern digital realms goes beyond its message carrying center; it serves as a mirror of itself in identity, emotion, and cultural location. The current paper examines what happens when Pashto-English bilinguals in Pakistan negotiate using social media sources namely Facebook, Instagram, and X (formally Twitter): specifically focusing on written and typed forces of language use. With the help of the insights of the digital sociolinguistics, multimodal discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, classic code-switching theory, this analysis illustrates how bilingual users using Pashto and English interlace each other strategically to enact selfhood and signal membership as a reaction to the affordance of different digital environments. After analyzing 300 accessible social media posts, one can find the evidence that code-switching is more than mechanic result of being a bilingual person: it is a conscious artistic choice. Contemporary English is often used as a platform of humour, accentuation, emotional dynamics and expanded social presence, in contrast, Pashto is the foundation of cultural and communal identity. The support allowed by devices like emojis, hashtags, and punctuation are not decorative but valuable resources in building meaning. The linguistic behaviour is also influenced by site-specific design: Instagram allows very English-oriented aesthetics; Facebook supports more locally-grounded bilingual communication; and X encourages very short and humorous messages. This means then that Pashto-English users are not engaged in passive juggler performances of their languages, but they are involved in some hybrid identities with impunity. These results can be used to clarify intricate bilingual sociolinguistic identity and emerging digital literacy among bilingual users in South Asia, which are relevant to educators, linguists, and platform developers as bilingual expression in the area proceeds to change.