Lexical and Pragmatic Features of Fan Communication on the Social Media Platform X

The widespread use of social media has changed the ways in which audiences interact with popular culture, leading to the emergence of online fan communities. An online fandom is examined as a community of people united by a common interest in a particular object of popular culture who actively interact on social media. When fans interact online, they exchange information, express their opinions, emotions, attitudes towards actors, events and other fans, creating a sense of community. Although fan culture has been examined in cultural studies, psychology and media studies, the linguistic organisation of fan communication on social media platforms has received limited scholarly attention. The aim of this article is to study the linguistic characteristics of fandom communication on the X platform (formerly Twitter), with particular attention to its lexical and pragmatic features. The analysis is based on a corpus of posts and comment threads related to popular films, television series and actors. It identifies the main features of fandom communication on social media, including the construction of group identity, the use of linguistic devices to express evaluation and emotion, parasocial relationships between fans and celebrities and the use of intertextual references. The results demonstrate that fandom discourse on X is characterised by lexical innovation, the use of personal pronouns (we, us, our vs. they, them, their) and fandom- specific community labels to establish in-group identity, the frequent use of online slang and evaluative language. Fans reduce the perceived social distance between themselves and celebrities through the use of diminutive forms of address and nicknames. Communication within fandom spaces is also highly intertextual, it relies on shared vocabulary, memes and inside jokes based on common knowledge of films, television series, celebrities and fan culture. This study contributes to current research on online communication and language use on social media platforms.