Digital Orphanhood: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Abandoned Online Identities and Their Linguistic Traces

Abstract

In the new more digital society, orphaned digital profiles, social media accounts belonging to users who have died have become areas of great power and emotional reception within which the memory, identity and language come into conjunction. According to Brubaker et al. (2013), orphaned digital profiles are "persistent online accounts that outlive their users, becoming sites of ongoing social interaction and memory practices." These profiles, commonly maintained or accessed by friends, family or the social world in general provide a distinct way of viewing the use of words to keep memories of the dead alive and give the feeling of being present in online forums. This paper seeks to discuss the linguistic key used in such profiles, as well as, present an analysis on how this language is used to illustrate memory building and emotional affiliation in digital memorials. By means of secondary data analysis on academic literature, case studies, and social media discourse with the help of a qualitative research methodology, a case-study approach, and thematic analysis based on the concepts of digital memory theory. The findings shows  how language used in such environments is no longer a means of encapsulating the deceased but rather of converting the grieving into a continuous, socially contextualized and digitally eternalized journey.