Casting Identities in the Discursive Construction of YouTube “small reviews”

This chapter looks at the discursive construction of YouTube reviews through identity projection. In a world of constant connectivity, ubiquitous digitality contributes to the everyday practices of selfhood that are realised through different forms of participation against the background of the so-called connectivity culture in which everything, from thoughts and opinions to images and videos, is highly shareable. Viewing identity as being socially constructed in interaction (Bucholtz & Hall, Discourse Studies, 7:585–614, 2005; Eckert & Rickford, Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge University Press, 2001; Zimmerman, Identities in Talk. Sage, 1998), this work reports on a case study of the way participants foreground different aspects of self in the discursive construction of 25 YouTube smartphone reviews. More specifically, the study focuses on how affective stances towards the products being reviewed are directly and indirectly manifested through discursive work that involves acts of self-presentation in the textual comments or small reviews posted in Spanish on the sites.