Digital Tongues: Internet Language, Collective Identity, and Implications for Human-Computer Interaction

Zi-Xiang Lin


Abstract
Nowadays, internet languages, including emojis, memes, hashtags, and slang, have become vital in constructing online communities’ collective identities. However, all these forms of internet language can sometimes disempower people from other generations or cultures. This position paper presents an argument explaining how online forms of communication create social belonging for specific groups at the expense of users, and especially elderly people, due to interpretation hurdles. The present study aims to evaluate the relationship between the internet language and online collective identity, highlighting how patterns in internet language can inform human- computer interaction (HCI) by revealing how users’ express identity, inclusion, and exclusion online.
Anthology ID:
2025.hcinlp-1.1
Volume:
Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Bridging Human-Computer Interaction and Natural Language Processing (HCI+NLP)
Month:
November
Year:
2025
Address:
Suzhou, China
Editors:
Su Lin Blodgett, Amanda Cercas Curry, Sunipa Dev, Siyan Li, Michael Madaio, Jack Wang, Sherry Tongshuang Wu, Ziang Xiao, Diyi Yang
Venues:
HCINLP | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
1–6
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.hcinlp-1.1/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Zi-Xiang Lin. 2025. Digital Tongues: Internet Language, Collective Identity, and Implications for Human-Computer Interaction. In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Bridging Human-Computer Interaction and Natural Language Processing (HCI+NLP), pages 1–6, Suzhou, China. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Digital Tongues: Internet Language, Collective Identity, and Implications for Human-Computer Interaction (Lin, HCINLP 2025)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.hcinlp-1.1.pdf