DIGITAL CONTENT CREATORS AS LINGUISTIC AUTHORITIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY: AN ANALYSIS OF THE TIKTOK PROFILE @PROFESSORNOSLEN

Abstract

The present article aims to reflect on the role of digital content creators who set out to teach the Portuguese language as glottopolitical agents of the 21st century. To do so, we will first discuss the concepts of glottopolitical agent and linguistic authority. The main objective of this paper is to investigate how users react in the comments to the grammatical rules taught by Professor Noslen in his TikTok posts. In the methodology, we will analyze the comment section of the TikTok account @professornoslen in order to examine how Brazilian speakers engage with the content presented. The comments analyzed are from the entire month of December 2024, and through this investigation, we will see whether users accept, agree with, question, or disagree with the teachings present in the posts of the professor/digital influencer. In the results, we observe that, even without the use of sources – neither from authors nor from grammar books or dictionaries – the vast majority of the audience accepts and believes that the way of speaking or writing being taught on the @professornoslen profile is the correct one. Thus, this investigation confirmed that Professor Noslen, like other digital content creators dedicated to teaching the Portuguese language, can be considered glottopolitical agents of the 21st century, as his work has a significant impact on how millions of Brazilian speakers perceive and use the language, not requiring laws or formal decrees for their linguistic influence to have tangible effects. Although they do not explicitly rely on authors and grammars, they create digital content based on the normative tradition of such works, thus serving as vectors for transmitting a certain tradition.