AN ANALYSIS OF THE EXPRESSIVE SPEECH ACT ON THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION INSTAGRAM COMMENTS ABOUT COVID-19

Abstract

The Covid-19 outbreak that has hit the world has caused World Health Organization (WHO) as the front line to provide education and information about Covid-19 regularly. WHO uses Instagram as a social media to share information about Covid-19. WHO’s Instagram invites many responses from its followers who express their comments in different ways. In this study, the writer describes the expressive speech acts on WHO’s Instagram about Covid-19. Expressive speech acts used must have a communication purpose. The data for this study were taken from the comments of WHO’s followers on the two WHO posts related to COVID-19 that received the most response. This research is qualitative because it uses words as an analysis material, not numbers. The theoretical concept used refers to the theory of Searle (1976), Cutting (2003), Holmes (2013), Leech (1974). The results of the study show (1) Found 5 types of expressive speech acts, namely thanking, praising, complaining, protesting, and hoping. (2) Found the function of each type of expressive speech act according to the context used by its followers, such as expressing gratitude, praise, blasphemy, judges, etc. (3) Found functions that are often used by WHO’s Instagram followers. This study found 5 types of expressive speech acts, namely thanking, praising, complaining, protesting, and hoping, as well as their respective functions. The results of this study are useful for students who observe speech acts, especially expressive speech acts that have functions that follow the context of the expressive speech act users themselves, and are useful for future researchers to be a reference for research on expressive speech. acting on data or other linguistic subjects.