Phraseology and social media. Infotainment posts and user comments on formulaic language

Abstract Social media has become an important site for the circulation and discussion of formulaic language among the general public, yet it has received only limited attention in phraseological research. Addressing this gap, the present corpus-based case study investigates phraseological content published by the German Instagram account aroundtheword and the accompanying user comments. The analysis focuses on two complementary dimensions: the multimodal presentation of phraseological knowledge in infotainment posts and the reflexive negotiation of formulaic language in subsequent user interaction. The findings show that social media posts can successfully stimulate public engagement with phraseology. Users discuss the meanings, origins, variants, and cross-linguistic equivalents of phrasemes, evaluate their appropriateness and potential discriminatory implications, and contribute additional examples from their own linguistic repertoires. The comments thus provide valuable insights into speakers’ phraseological knowledge, language attitudes, patterns of variation, and processes of self-positioning. At the same time, they reveal the interaction between conventionality and creativity as established expressions become the basis for playful modifications. The paper argues that social media comments constitute a rich empirical resource for phraseological research, offering access to metapragmatic reflection, diasystematic variation, and the relationship between conventionalization and entrenchment, while opening up new perspectives on the social negotiation of formulaic language. In this way, the study highlights the potential of digital communication as a promising field for future research at the intersection of phraseology, pragmatics, and media linguistics.