Language Analysis and the Role of Facebook Hashtags in Pakistan

Abstract

Over the past few years, online hashtags have gained tremendous fame mainly because of two reasons: first, as digital information trackers and second, as short and spontaneous communication tags. The present study aims to explore language factors in three types of Facebook hashtags, that is, long, short, and multiple mixed. It further investigates each factor’s role in online communication by performing an in-depth examination through activities and close-ended questions. First, it identifies factors through the writing activities where participants wrote different hashtags with their intention behind each hashtag. It follows interpretation activities in which other participants wrote their interpretations about the already written hashtags. Further, a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire was developed to note participants’ opinions about hashtags which were evaluated by the SPSS factor analysis test. Results of the study are divided into three sections and showed that lack of adequate vocabulary and lower casing is an important factor affecting digital communication in Pakistan. It is also suggested that teachers should play their part to improve informal writing and digital literacy in Pakistan.