Identity markers in the Internet usernames adopted by female users of a Persian public discussion forum: A sociolinguistic analysis

Abstract

Drawing on the feminist poststructuralist perspective, the current study explored the usernames adopted by female users of Ninisite, that is, a Persian discussion forum, and aimed at identifying their identity markers. To this end, a corpus of 947 usernames in Ninisite was compiled. Using thematic analysis, the recurrent themes in the usernames were pinpointed, which led to the identification of six themes as identity markers, namely, gender, religion/ideology, ethnicity, occupation/profession, being humorous, and sense of uniqueness. With regard to the socioculturally unique context of Iran, a continuum of specificity versus generality can be observed in the usernames on Ninisite, with specificity emphasizing differences, sense of uniqueness, and individualization of the users, and generality highlighting neutrality, commonalities, and conventionality.