“High energy ahead!”: exploring Chinese adolescents’ pragmatic identities in bullet-screen discourse

In the digital era, bullet-screen comments have emerged as an innovative online communication method, serving as a vital bridge that connects young internet users, stimulates creative expression, and fosters cultural resonance. Particularly in China, bullet-screen video platforms, exemplified by Bilibili, have quickly attracted a large youth audience due to their features of real-time interaction and deep engagement. As active communication participants in cyberspace, the online language features and identity construction characteristics of adolescents not only reflect the value orientations and behavioral patterns of contemporary youth but also play a significant role in the evolution and shaping of online social environments. This study, grounded in pragmatic identity theory, conducts an in-depth analysis of the pragmatic identity construction of Chinese adolescents in bullet-screen communication. By selecting Bilibili as the research site and carefully choosing six representative bullet-screen videos as analytical samples, the study examines the bullet-screen content in detail, revealing that adolescents can flexibly construct multiple pragmatic identities within this instant interactive discourse system. These identities include “commentators,” “passers-by,” “mockers,” “onlookers,” “questioners,” “knowledge sharers,” and “spoilers.” To meet diverse communicative needs and objectives, adolescents employ various discourse strategies to construct these diverse pragmatic identities, such as language style, speech acts, and vocabulary selection. The use of these discourse strategies not only aids bullet-screen senders in successfully constructing different pragmatic identities but also generates varied communicative effects, creating a dynamic interactive process.