Abstract
This article examines the phenomenon of language play in the contemporary communicative space based on Kazakh-language content on Instagram. At the present stage of digital communication, language functions not only as a means of transmitting information, but also as a creative tool that produces emotional impact, attracts audience attention, and shapes the author’s personal style. In this context, language play is regarded as one of the significant components of internet discourse. The aim of the study is to identify the most common patterns of language play in social media texts, to analyze their structural, semantic, and pragmatic features, and to provide a linguistic description of their functioning in the modern communicative space. The study includes a theoretical review of domestic and international scholarly works devoted to language play. As empirical material, the authors used Kazakh-language Instagram posts widely circulated in 2025. The linguistic data were analyzed using structural, comparative, and pragmatic methods. The findings show that language play is realized at the lexical, graphic, phonetic, and semantic levels. Its main devices include irony, hyperbole, paradox, pun, and intertextuality. It was also established that the key functions of language play are to create expressiveness, produce a comic effect, express social evaluation, and establish informal communicative closeness with the addressee. The results demonstrate that language play in internet communication contributes significantly to the dynamic development of language, the formation of new language models, and the interpretation of digital discourse. The findings can be used in research on media linguistics, pragmalinguistics, and sociolinguistics, as well as in university teaching practice. Keywords: language game, digital discourse, internet communication, Instagram, media linguistics, pragmatics, the Kazakh language, linguistic creativity.