THE HYPERBOLIZATION OF 'ME'. A LINGUISTIC APPROACH TO SELF-PORTRAYAL IN THE VIRTUAL SPACE
THE HYPERBOLIZATION OF 'ME'. A LINGUISTIC APPROACH TO SELF-PORTRAYAL IN THE VIRTUAL SPACE

Summary/Abstract: With the advent of social media, a recurrent theme in literature and psychology has turned into a major concern for psychologists and social scientists due to its blatant mismatch between a person’s real way of being and the one served as real in the social media. ‘Grandiose narcissism’, because this is the topic taken into consideration, has been defined as ‘a means of online self-promotion’ or ‘a way to showcase ourselves in our best light’ (McCain & Campbell, 2016) and it has been researched upon in complex studies carried out by researchers in universities (e.g. ‘Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and Anti-social Behavior,’ Carpenter, 2012). The efforts of psychologists and social scientists can be sustained by investigations in other connected fields that might help better understand the phenomenon and maybe find explanations for it. That is why this paper aim at analyzing the linguistic aspects which help build the grandiose portrayal to be composed in the social media. Vocabulary choices, preferred grammatical structures, pragmatic aspects related to media interaction, face-saving or face-threatening acts, etc.

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