DOI: https://doi.org/10.36719/3104-4735/5/22-30

The Impact of Social Media Technologies on Language Dynamics: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Code-Switching and Code-Mixing in Communication

Yegana Gahramanova

Abstract. This study examines the sociolinguistic impact of social media technologies and digital communication platforms on the contemporary dynamics of the Azerbaijani language, with particular attention to its lexical and syntactic structure. The primary focus of the study is on instances of “code-switching” and “code-mixing” observed between Azerbaijani and other languages, particularly English and Russian, during digital communication. The study draws on digital materials collected from Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, and X between September 2025 and February 2026. An initial dataset consisting of approximately 120,000 words of digital text was compiled, from which 100 instances of code-switching and code-mixing were selected for structural and functional analysis. The examples were categorized according to Poplack’s classification into intra-sentential, inter-sentential, and tag-switching categories. The quantitative analysis revealed that intra-sentential switching accounted for 57%, inter-sentential switching for 28%, and tag-switching for 15% of the analyzed cases. The qualitative analysis indicates that code-switching can be associated with such functions as communicative economy, terminological convenience, audience adaptation, expressiveness, and digital identity. The study also demonstrates that the adaptation of foreign-origin lexical items to the morphological system of Azerbaijani should be considered as a distinct process within digital language practices. The findings suggest that digital multilingualism constitutes an important component of the contemporary development dynamics of the Azerbaijani language.

Keywords: digital sociolinguistics, social media, code-switching, code-mixing, Azerbaijani language, multilingualism, digital communication, digital corpus