Exploring Liminal Aesthetics: the “Glitchy and Decayed” Worlds of Vaporwave, Semiotic Assemblages, and Internet Linguistics

Abstract

"Exploring Liminal Aesthetics: The “Glitchy and Decayed” Worlds of Vaporwave, Semiotic Assemblages, and Internet Linguistics. The topic of online identity formation in the realm of computer-mediated communication is nothing new. However, what does stand out, especially in recent years, in the larger framework of Internet-based sociolinguistic practices (David 2010; Williams 2006), is a much-needed exploration of various new microcultural aggregates. Some of these niche-genres are frequently encountered on YouTube, while others are primarily short-lived Instagram or TikTok community-driven trends. In essence, this paper states the belief that it is precisely these relatively contemporary microcultural trends that manage to accurately take the pulse of a new, post-pandemic world. Moreover, since many of these forms of artistic self-expression can be understood through a Cultural Sociolinguistic lens (Cotrău, Cotoc, and Papuc 2021), a translation of their particular symbolic meanings can only help decipher the increasingly chaotic, hypersubjective, and “semiotic assemblages” (Pennycook 2017) that individuals seem to be inhabiting and creating. Thus, the current paper aims to offer an analysis that ties together an array of only seemingly disparate elements, namely: cultural economy, creation and consumption of online cultural artefacts, and an affective processing that ties real-life traumatic events to the creation of particular cultural trends - liminal aesthetics and vaporwave, paired with a fascination with all things “glitchy and decayed” (Loignon and Messier 2020). Keywords: online identity, sociolinguistics, Internet linguistics, multimodality, vaporwave, liminal aesthetics, semiotic assemblages "