Speech Acts in the Facebook Status Updates Posted by an Apostate

Abstract

This paper discusses the speech acts in Facebook Status Updates posted by an apostate of Islam. The Facebook Timeline was observed for a duration of two years (January 2015 to December 2016). More than 4000 postings were made in the data collection period. However, only 648 postings are related to apostasy. The data were classified according to the types of speech acts. Expressive speech act is the most frequent speech act (33%, n=215), followed by the directive (27%, n=177), assertive (22%, n=141), and commissive (18%, n=115), respectively. Based on the speech acts used, it is discernible that the apostate attempts to engage other Facebook users and persuade them into accepting her ideology while gaining their support. This paper is novel in the sense that it puts forth the social actions of an apostate which is very scarce in literature. It is also methodologically innovative as it uses social media postings as a tool to explore the apostate’s social actions in an online space.

Speech Act Analysis of Whatsapp Statuses Used by Jordanians

“…This finding is consistent with the results found in the earlier studies (e.g. Wulandari, 2014;Mohamad et al, 2018). The analysis of the data collected positioned directive the second place in the second position of the most frequent used speech acts.…”

“…On commisive, the Whatsapp users encounter self-commitment in their daily interaction and they are likely to share them with WhatsApp contacts. The results come in the same line with the previous studies (Wulandari, 2014;Mohamad et al, 2018). However, the declarative has zero incident made by the participants.…”

“…Several empirical studies are discussed in this section to clarify the reader's understanding of previous related research and also to understand where this study started from and to show the gaps in the existing studies (Al-Smadi, 2017; Banikalef & Rababah, 2018;Mohamad et al, 2018;Raiman et al, 2017).…”

“…To start with, Mohamad et al, (2018) studied the speech acts in Facebook status updates posted by an apostate of Islam. The Facebook timeline was observed for a duration of two years (January 2015 to December 2016).…”

“…Although many studies have been carried out on social media (Faizin et al, 2018;Mohamad et al, 2018) most of these studies were not carried in either speech acts (Dastrjerdi & Nasri, 2013) or in WhatsApp statuses (Faizin et al, 2018;Mohamad et al, 2018). In other words, studies dedicated to WhatsApp statuses are lacking in the region and specifically in the Jordanian context (Al-Smadi, 2017; Almwajeh & Rababah, 2019).…”