Age and Platform Effects on Syntactic Complexity in Uzbek Social Media Discourse
Abstract
This study explores the influence of age and communication platform on syntactic complexity in Uzbek social media discourse, focusing on Telegram and Facebook. Data were collected from 150 participants across five age groups, each contributing approximately 300 words, resulting in a 50,000-word corpus. Three syntactic indicators were looked at: the percentage of simple sentences, the proportion of compound sentences, and the average sentence length. Age and platform had an important effect on syntactic structure (p < 0.001), according to descriptive statistics, two-way Welch ANOVA, and Games–Howell post-hoc tests. Younger users preferred shorter, simpler constructions, while older users produced longer, more complex sentences. In comparison with Telegram users, Facebook users showed more syntactic elaboration. These findings highlight that syntactic variation reflects both cognitive maturity and platform-specific communication norms in Uzbek computer-mediated communication.
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