A corpus-based pragmatic analysis of Jordanians Facebook status updates during COVID-19

Abstract

This study investigates the communicative functions of status updates on Facebook during COVID-19. For this purpose, a corpus of 500 status updates was collected from 100 Facebook users for 90 consecutive days. Subsequently, the data were characterized into five speech acts drawing heavily on Searle's speech act framework, prominent among which are expressives and assertives. Data analysis revealed that status updates could be considered a substantial medium for understanding intended human communication. Various types of speech acts were used with different frequencies and percentages, although people were inclined mostly to use expressive speech acts. The sociocultural variations in conjunction with forming and constructing identities were reflected in the status updates manifested in the current situation of the pandemic, which makes Jordanians appear more humorous than before. This research is significant because studying aspects of a language helps in understanding the hidden motivations, beliefs, ideas, attitudes and identities along with the social, cultural, and political factors, which in turn provides logical solutions for certain problems.

1. Introduction

Communication is the act of conveying messages and sharing information with others. Studying speech acts is a significant notion in pragmatics theory, which is crucial for understanding the implied meaning in addition to receiving the utterance's messages (Wu et al., 2017). Communicative acts help speakers perform particular discourse functions such as requesting, apologizing, and promising. According to Austin. (1962), the action produced via utterances consists of three acts: locutionary (the literal meaning of an utterance), illocutionary (the purpose of the utterance), and perlocutionary (the effect of the utterance on the receiver).

Searle (Searl, 1979) stated that when people communicate, they produce utterances to do things, i.e., make promises, issue warnings, and express feelings. Searle (Searl, 1979) presented a taxonomy of speech acts according to their illocutionary purpose as assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declaratives. Assertives represent a state of affairs expressing the speaker's belief, such as claiming, suggesting, etc. Directives help speakers express their desire to get the listeners to execute an action, as in ordering, requesting, etc. Commissives help speakers express their intentions or commit them to future actions, such as promising and offering. Expressives are a medium through which speakers represent their psychological state, emotions and attitudes, such as thanking, greeting, etc. Declaratives aid speakers in stating their affairs, such as sentencing and resigning. The role of context is evident in the taxonomy and interpretation of these speech acts, meaning that one utterance may have different functions in various contexts.

Language on the internet is a powerful source for researchers from different disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology and sociology. Crystal. (2001) stated that the revolution of the internet causes a linguistic revolution, showing that attention is given to the language of social media rather than to the technology itself. As noted by Boyd and Ellison (2008), one such new media technology, which has grabbed the attention and concern of the community, is the social network site (SNS).

Facebook has been the main channel of communication among people all over the world. It enables users to create their online profile by listing personal information and interests and connecting with other users (Hargittai et al., 2011). In addition, it has a unique feature enabling users to update their status and share their whereabouts, life events, thoughts, experiences and necessary information in texts, pictures, and videos with their contacts (Hargittai et al., 2011).

Since Facebook is generally perceived as a culture, examining this platform can help in studying culture (Balkanize and Bataineh, 2017; Androutsopoulos, 2014; Das and Sahoo, 2011; Ilyas and Khushi, 2012; Zhang and Wu, 2018). It is argued that examining speech acts used for updating Facebook statuses can expand knowledge about the social structure of the target community (Al Sad, 2021). In addition, examining various types of speech acts can culminate in a sociocultural significance derived from social, cultural, and political factors (Banikalef et al., 2014). This can be attributed to the fact that people's intentions and actions reflect their attitudes and social norms about that behaviour.

Since Facebook-based communication is rapidly becoming a significant element of contemporary culture, it is regarded as an essential means of self-representation (Gribach et al., 2019). Examining people's status updates on Facebook can reflect the cultural value, beliefs and ideas of a personality, and it enables us to understand the hidden motivations that can help find solutions for certain problems (Olson, 2007). Moreover, research has demonstrated that people can construct their identities and show their feelings and personal activities through Facebook status updates (Ilyas and Khushi, 2012). Thus, examining these status updates could help researchers explore the socialization patterns of users and show the way people think. This could also shed light on critical issues aiming to find appropriate solutions.

Although such studies are prolific in American and European contexts, there is a dearth of such studies in the Arab region. Moreover, no study has been devoted to examining this in the Jordanian Arabic context during COVID-19. Considering the significance of investigating Facebook status updates and the dearth of research on Facebook status updates during COVID-19, this research aims to identify the most frequent types of speech acts in the status updates posted by Jordanians during COVID-19 in addition to pointing out their functions.

This research enriches the literature on language use and communication on the internet. A full understanding of people's hidden motivations, attitudes, identities and social, cultural, and political backgrounds can be attained through a thorough examination of their language, as it reflects people's beliefs and ideas. Moreover, studying communicative acts in a specific context allows for a better understanding of the target social system, since people's actions mirror their thoughts and feelings. Thus, the study will raise awareness about the attitudes and beliefs of Jordanian users of Facebook status updates during COVID-19.

This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 offers an overview of speech act theory and then reviews the related literature on speech act use in social media. Section 3 illustrates the sample of the study, research design and coding and reliability procedures. The results of the study are presented and discussed in Sections 4, 5, respectively. The study concludes with some recommendations and implications in Section 6.

2. Literature review

2.1. Speech act theory

Speech act theory, founded by Austin. (1962), is a ground-breaking theory in pragmatics that shows how language is used to do actions and not only to present information. Speech acts are associated with “illocutionary acts”, as they are the main units of any linguistic communication (Searl, 1979). Considering the association between ‘structural forms’ and ‘communicative functions’, Searle (Searl, 1979, p.59) states that the simplest meaning is the one conveyed by a sentence that means exactly and literally what it says. This direct speech act differs from the indirect one, where more is said (meant) than uttered, and this is retrieved by reference to the context. Hence, examining speech acts is significant because most daily conversations are based on information conveyed beyond what is literally uttered.

Speech acts represent the essential social values and norms of the target language that are clarified in the rules of using language in a certain speech community (Byon, 2006). The propositions performed through particular speech acts largely depend on the speaker's intention, with context being essential for the right interpretation of these propositions and the addressees' ability to understand the intended meaning based on their shared knowledge. That is why language is chosen with full consideration of several factors, among which are the culture, traditions, customs, social relationship, context, and personal characteristics of the interlocutors.

Grice (Grice et al., 1975) argues that the intended meaning in conversations is often inferred and predictable. Thus, conclusions of daily conversations are deduced from what is actually said and encoded (Blome-Tillmann, 2008). The conversational implicature phenomenon is closely associated with specific significant features of discourse known as the cooperative principle. This principle directs speakers as follows: “make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (Grice et al., 1975, p.26). Observing these maxims in conversations helps the addressees comprehend the pragmatic meaning of utterances. In contrast, violating these maxims signifies that the speaker does not want to cooperate and fails to communicate effectively (Thomas, 1995, p.72).

This highlights the significance of the context of the utterance to properly understand the speech function (Geis, 1995). Contexts can be situational or background (Cutting, 2002). While situational context involves speakers’ recognition of things around them, background knowledge encompasses what they know about each other. The latter involves both cultural knowledge (i.e., speakers' knowledge about the world) and interpersonal knowledge (i.e., personal knowledge about the speaker and former shared verbal interaction and experiences). Thus, sharing reciprocal knowledge concerning everything could result in successful communication.

2.2. The communicative functions of facebook language

Various studies seek to examine the language of social media platforms, particularly the communicative functions of Facebook posts and their comments. For example, Ilyas and Khushi (2012) explored the communicative functions of status updates on Facebook. The data consisted of 171 Facebook updates analysed through Searle's speech act theory. The sample comprised 60 males and females aged 18–24 years. The results revealed that expressive speech acts are the most dominant, followed by assertives and then directives. Additionally, some Facebook updates belonged to a new category, ‘poetic verses’, which refer to poems in themes varying from love, sadness, joy and support. They found that Facebook users expressed their emotions and shared much information about their lives in status updates, thus highlighting some socialization patterns. Nonetheless, their study did not investigate updates during particular phenomena or events. They merely elicited rough data over a short period of time for 5 consecutive days.

Carr et al. (2009) also studied how participants employ the status messages of social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace socially to communicate and construct their identity. An analysis of the data indicated that status updates were classified as expressives (60%), assertives (39%), directives (6%) or commissives (3%). Humour was used in approximately 20% of the status messages. Nevertheless, similar to (Ilyas and Khushi, 2012), the research aim was mainly devoted to the updates that were irrelevant to certain critical issues or incidents. The data were obtained from students' status messages three times daily over fourteen consecutive days. In addition, although the findings demonstrated various types of communication apparent on the two media, they did not fully predict the underlying reasons for the differences among them in a theoretically grounded way.

Nasri et al. (Nastri et al., 2006) examined the construction of away messages within speech act theory. The analysis of 483 away messages posted by 44 users over 14 days showed that these messages were largely assertives, followed by expressives and commissives, with limited occurrences of directives. Their results showed how away messages usually highlight informational and entertainment goals. However, the exploration of these away messages was not directed towards giving enough clarification of a particular case or matter. In addition, the data were not collected consecutively, and nothing was demonstrated about the interplay between the results of the analysis of the data collected via the questionnaire answered by the participants and the content analysis of their away messages.

In the Jordanian context, Banikalef et al. (2014) offered a sociopragmatic analysis of the communication of humour in Jordanian Arabic. A sample of 1535 status updates were classified according to their communicative functions. The analysis of the data showed that only 210 messages were coded as humorous, showing that Jordanians tend to be serious. The findings also reported that males tend to be more humorous than females. Although focusing on expressing humour in status updates as a communicative function, the results were based on a limited number of samples and did not give a clearer representation of the use of humour in the Jordanian context.

In another study, Banikalef (2019) discussed the use of speech acts in Facebook status updates and offered insight into the influence of Jordanians' social structure and gender differences. A total of 1718 Facebook userswere collected over a period of 2 months. Then, they were categorized by drawing heavily on Searle's speech act taxonomy. The results indicated that male participants were inclined to use more assertive speech acts, whereas females were more likely to use expressive speech acts. Islam and tribalism also play a significant role in defining the cultural norms of the Jordanian speech community. However, the study did not provide a comprehensive scene of the impact of virtual communities (including Facebook) on users' self-representation and linguistic attitudes.

Al-Khawaldeh et al. (2016) also investigated the connotations and functions of the semantic notifications made by Jordanians to uncover some latent sociocultural values influencing the way they make specific language choices in these online notifications. The analysis of 300 status notifications demonstrated that the status updates constitute a valid manifestation of the personal, social, religious and political issues of the users and their society. Nonetheless, the study chiefly focused on a simple qualitative analysis of the sociocultural themes manifested in WhatsApp's semantic notifications, a more personal social media platform.

Al Sad (Al Sad, 2021) investigated the types of speech acts used by Jordanian and American youth while updating their Facebook status. The data of the study were obtained from 100 American males and females and 100 Jordanian males and females. The data were then analysed based on Searle's taxonomy. The results revealed that the religious and cultural backgrounds of Jordanian students exert a considerable impact on their linguistic choices when updating their Facebook status as opposed to their American counterparts. The only similarity found between American and Jordanian females was that both groups highly preferred using expressive speech acts. However, the study overlooked participants' age stages, a very important variable because different ages may have different update preferences while sharing on Facebook.

2.3. Speech act research during COVID-19

Disasters and diseases affect the way people communicate and the language they use. In this regard, some studies have sought this during the COVID-19 pandemic (Anggraeni et al., 2020; Park et al., 2021; Iqbal et al., 2020). Nevertheless, many of the previous studies have focused on analysing speech acts in the political context. For example, Anggraeni et al. (2020) explored the expressive speech act on the president's announcement about the first patient infected with COVID-19 in Indonesia through sampling comments on Instagram. A qualitative and descriptive research analysis of the data showed that responses on Instagram were categorized into 16 speech acts of wishing, 9 complaining acts, and 4 protesting acts. The wishing speech acts report people's wishes that they will be saved by Allah and the virus does not spread. However, the study considered only expressive speech acts in a case study on Instagram; thus, it did not provide a comprehensive analysis of all speech acts used in notifications concerning COVID-19.

Nurkhamidah (2020) provided a speech act analysis of Donald Trump's speech after the breakout of COVID-19. The results showed that the category of assertives was the most frequent (54%), and it contained acts of boasting, claiming, describing, informing, and stating. The next category was commissives (29%), and it consisted of promising and planning acts. The directives category came next (15%), and it contained acts of commanding and advising. Expressives and declaratives had a very limited frequency of 1% each. However, the analysis did not encompass all notifications concerning COVID-19, being based mainly on a single speech conveyed by Trump.

Agwuocha and Anaekperechi (Agwuocha, 2020) explored numerous data on COVID-19-related information posted on Twitter to determine the toxicity of language employing Austin's and Culpeper's models of speech act and impoliteness theory. The findings manifested how COVID-19 increased speech related to violence, unrest, stigmatization, and racism. Impolite language against Chinese nationals provoked several perlocutionary acts. One of them is that Asian communities have been stigmatized. Language competency has also been abused in response to “infodemics” and misinterpretations of possible causes and handling of the rising cases of COVID-19. Because language competency requires grammar knowledge, lexicon, speaking and reacting rules, and appropriate language use in various contexts (Hymes, 1972), language is utilized to maintain peace but may also generate violence if not employed appropriately. Therefore, a speaker must be able to communicate effectively to maintain harmony and peace (Agwuocha, 2020).

Suparto (2020) studied speech acts on YouTube channel programs and Facebook pages during COVID-19. Expressive speech acts were the most dominant, consisting of expressing gratitude, complaining, praising, apologizing, and motivating. This conclusion was in line with Utami and Yantis' (Utami and Yanti, 2021) study, which investigated expressive speech acts on the WHO's Instagram about COVID-19. The data were collected from the followers' comments on two posts, relying on Searle (1976), Cutting (2002), Holmes (Holmes and Marra, 2002), and Leech's (Leech, 1983) theories. The study found five types of expressive speech acts: thanking, praising, complaining, protesting, and hoping, in addition to their functions.

Previous research on speech acts during COVID-19 (e.g. (Anggraeni et al., 2020; Agwuocha, 2020; Suparto, 2020),) investigated the data over a single period without referring to the period's length, leading to less authenticity. Furthermore, most of them employed undiversified data collected from the same scope, affecting the findings' generalizability. In addition, some studies, such as (Agwuocha, 2020), did not clarify the method and procedures of collecting and analysing the data, leading to less credibility.

To this end, the status messages of social network sites are a rich source of information for different types of analysis, including linguistic analysis in general and pragmatic and critical discourse analysis in particular. The previous literature accentuates the importance of these status updates as good means for shedding light on different aspects in life. They reveal that such messages serve various types of communicative functions, including exchanging information, creating identities, socialization, collaboration and coordination. Consequently, they represent diverse themes, namely, personal, social, political, religious, national and international. They also show that the update of these status messages is motivated by the interplay of some variables, including personality, gender, age, culture, context and decision-making. Therefore, there are numerous sociocultural and sociolinguistic implications of status messages of social networks. Because this topic has been one of heated debates in the recent literature, researchers, e.g., (Al Sad, 2021; Al-Khawaldeh et al., 2016), call for more research examining Facebook's status updates and posts to enrich computer-mediated discourse research. Considering that there is no study devoted to examining the impact of COVID-19 on the Facebook status updates of Jordanians, the present study aims to fill in a gap in the literature by examining the frequency and types of speech acts in Jordanians' social media discourse. Where some of the previous studies were limited to a period of days, the data for this study were collected from 100 participants over 90 days.

3. Methodology

3.1. Study sample

Facebook is considered the most popular social media platform in Jordan, with 5.25 million active users in early2022.1 People aged 25 to 34 were the largest user group. A corpus is a collection of texts or a database that comprises texts used for purposes of general linguistics (Meyer, 2002). Corpus-based analysis enables researchers to deduce certain tokens automatically from a corpus along with other encoded info about the speaker. Table 1 demonstrates the characteristics of the study sample.

Table 1.

The characteristics of the study sample.

Number	Gender	Age
100 active users of Facebook	56 males	19–34 years old
	44 females

All participants were Jordanians and had spent all their lives in Jordan. Out of the 163 participants who were randomly chosen and contacted by phone and messenger, only 100 individuals agreed to participate. A consent form was signed by each participant, and the participants' names were left confidential for privacy's sake.

3.2. Research design

This study applies a mixed-method approach by incorporating qualitative and quantitative approaches. The qualitative approach has been chosen in data classification into different types of speech acts. As in (Ren and Guo, 2020; Guo and Ren, 2020), the quantitative approach has been applied for calculating the percentages and frequencies of speech acts that define the communicative functions of Facebook (hereafter FB) status updates. Data from this study were elicited mainly via Facebook's status updates, as they provided wide sources of naturalistic behavioural data (Ellison et al., 2007; Wilson et al., 2012).

Speech act theory was adopted because it has been used as a practical taxonomy in studies of natural language processing and computer-mediated communication (Nastri et al., 2006; Sotillo, 2012). Content analysis was applied to analyse the types of speech acts in the FSUs according to Searle's speech act taxonomy (Searle, 1976). FB posts were classified into:

• 1.Assertives: utterances reporting statements of fact verifiable as true or false (e.g., statement, accusation, assertion, and conclusion).
• 2.Commissives: utterances committing one to do something (e.g., promise oath, guarantee, and threat).
• 3.Directives: utterances intended to direct someone to do something (e.g., request, advice, prohibition, and questions).
• 4.Declarations: utterances bringing about a change in the state of affairs (e.g., calling a truce and declaring war).
• 5.Expressives: utterances expressing speaker attitudes (e.g., thanking, apology, and regret).

3.3. Coding and reliability

To determine the types and frequencies of speech acts, 500 FSUs were analysed starting from the first wave of COVID-19 in March 2020. The status updates were categorized and then coded carefully by the researchers. Following Ren & Guo's suggestions (Ren and Guo, 2020), all posts were divided into component messages because a single status update could contain multiple sentences, and a single sentence could comprise multiple functions. To ensure reliability, the data were double-checked by three interraters. As interrater reliability reached 93%, all cases of disagreements were resolved through discussion.

4. Results

Analysing the data reveals the use of the various types of speech acts with different frequencies and percentages. Table 2 demonstrates the frequencies of the usage of these speech act types.

Table 2.

Frequencies and percentages of speech Act types used in facebook status updates.

Speech Act Type	Frequency	Percentage
Expressive speech acts	242	48%
Assertive speech acts	165	33%
Directive speech acts	75	15%
Commissive speech acts	18	%4
Declarative speech acts	0	0%

Fig. 1 below shows that (242) expressive speech acts consisting mainly of expressions of condolence, complaint, regretting, criticism and compliment are the dominant speech acts, with 48% of the total. The category is followed by (165) assertive acts, which include concluding, claiming, and reporting, at 33%. The directive speech acts (15%) come next, comprising (75) acts of commanding and asking and advising. The category of commissives has a very limited occurrence (4%) of (18) acts, where most of them belong to promising and suggesting. No examples of declarative speech acts are found in the data. The types of speech acts of Facebook status updates are summarized in the following Fig. 1:

Fig. 1.

Types of speech acts on facebook status updates.

Below is an analysis of the five categories, with examples discussed on each one relying on Searle's speech act taxonomy. Following Nastri et al. (2006), some of the status updates were broken into two or more parts because of the different communicative functions they perform.

4.1. Expressives

The speech act of expressives reflects the person's psychological state. This speech act is common in FB because the users tend to prove their presence by expressing their feelings in challenging situations, revealing their perspectives about certain issues and sharing their daily activities and experiences. The FSUs express emotions associated with the most prevalent expressive speech acts: complaints, regrets, condolences, criticisms and compliments.

4.1.1. Complaints

Expressing complaints explicitly or implicitly reduces people's anger. However, direct complaints could threaten the complainee's face. Interestingly, people tend to express their anger and complain freely on Facebook more than on other platforms, such as Twitter. Bear in mind that Twitter is used mainly by educated and authorized people and tweets are monitored by official authorities. In the following post, the speakers directly complained about the bad life circumstances that emerged because of the spread of COVID-19. From the first moment of the outbreak of the new COVID-19 in the world, there was a research belief, which turned into a major news item in almost all newspapers across the world, that the direct source of the emerging COVID-19 is a type of bat called “the horseshoe bat.”

In the following post, the speakers directly complained about the excessive use of technological gadgets during COVID-19, which led to the loss of the sense of real social interaction. Loneliness is evident among many people, although they are surrounded by other relatives and close friends.

The reason behind posting this idea is that they spend a lot of time using modern technology, social networks, and other applications, which results in neglect of their real lives and increases rates of social isolation. They are so attached to their phones in talking to people around them.

Complaints could be conveyed implicitly using humour, which is an asset in the world of social media and enables users to express their feelings of complaints in a lovely, acceptable way. In the following example, the status update expresses a complaint against the lockdown, which affected people's work. This is similar to Jordanian customs law, which is unacceptable by many Jordanians, yet they live with it. Consequently, people are likely to complain as they try to vent and sort their feelings.

4.1.2. Condolences

Condolences are communicative acts that help people convey their sympathy, e.g., after someone's death. They are expressions of sorrow and pain to those who experience the death of someone close to them. Through sharing sad experiences, people tend to decrease the event's severity. In the following status update, the speaker condoles all families of those who passed away because of COVID-19. It also shows how the corona crisis affects people's lives in certain ways, such as feeling demotivated, depressed, irresponsive and fearful. Some status updates are religious-oriented, as they show the user's expressions of sorrow, sympathy, and concern but at the same time emphasize that they accept their fate. See the following examples:

People have increasingly used God invocation expressions during COVID-19. This means that people reflect their religious identity in FSUs through their linguistic choices of “phraseology”.

4.1.3. Regrets

Speakers tend to express regret for having, doing or saying something bad. This communicative act helps them show their sorrow, sadness and disappointment, especially because something unpleasant has happened. In the following posts, the speakers regret experiencing unpleasant harsh conditions of sickness because of being infected with the coronavirus.

They also regret experiencing dramatic psychological consequences. They have remorse and other negative emotions triggered by the present pandemic, such as tiredness, boredom and lack of hope, which may lead to severe psychological symptoms causing a serious threat to their mental health.

4.1.4. Criticisms

Criticism is a communicative act used for negatively evaluating what the addressee has said or done with an intention to enhance their words, actions, behaviour, and attitudes. A good criticism should convey a positive message using a positive manner and language. The following status updates criticize the government through a joke. Sarcasm is a mirror of what society thinks about political, economic and social issues, helping them voice their opinion and convey messages in an indirect and acceptable way. Humour is considered a relief in these troubled times.

4.1.5. Compliments

Complimenting is the act of expressing positive evaluation of qualities related to people, their sayings, actions, possessions and accomplishments. It can be manifested through comparison with others’ belongings, sayings and actions. In this status update, the speaker describes his sense of pride in government treatment with Jordanian travellers and provides them with free accommodation.

4.2. Assertives (Representatives)

Searle (1976) refers to assertives as speech acts that commit a speaker to a proposition. The identity and ideology of the sender can be shown by expressing his or her belief, which might be true or false. An assertive speech act can be concluding, claiming, or reporting. See below some examples of expressive status updates.

4.2.1. Concluding

Concluding is the communicative act that one ends any interaction with by asserting his or her internal deliberations. These speech acts are a result of argument, evidence, mere guesses, justified presumptions and conjectures, or fortified assertions grounded in knowledge (Green, 2009). In the first status update below, the speaker concludes based on the scientists’ scientific endeavours and initial results that taking the vaccine is the beginning of the end for the deadly virus.

Jordanians succeeded in evoking humour at every turn. Notably, humour is the most common effect of some speech acts. In the following status, the speaker humorously asserts that Jordanians insist that COVID-19 is merely like a normal cold flu.

4.2.2. Claiming

Claiming is a type of interactive act asserting that something is the case, usually without providing supportive evidence. The user here asserts his notion by claiming that the coronavirus vaccine will cause dangerous changes to human bodies, among which changes will occur in their DNA and cause infertility and sterility, as demonstrated in the following status updates. The user in such cases will be responsible for his or her hypotheses, and readers will choose to believe them or not.

Diverse users propagated this status update, hypothesizing that the vaccine will affect DNA. They were hasty to spread such information, declining to check it. The reason for sharing such hasty information may be to show their endeavours in understanding the circumstances, even if such information is untrue.

Since Facebook is the most diverse platform (including different social statuses), much misinformation has spread on it. In addition, it is observed that people primarily post conspiracy theories, specifically about the virus and vaccines. Notably, users mostly use the assertive mode, so the post sounds reliable. Indeed, infodemics mushroom rapidly when influencers share them. Recently, drastic changes in technology and virtual sites have eased the path for any person to become an influencer, regardless of his or her content.

4.2.3. Reporting

The act of reporting is used to assert the outcomes of a certain past or present action (Searle et al., 1985). In the following status updates, the speakers report the percentages of infections and deaths by COVID-19.

4.3. Directives

According to Searle (1976), the purpose of this act is to make the receiver's behaviour match the propositional content. Correspondingly, “directives could be obeyed, disobeyed, complied with, granted, denied, etc.” ((Searle, 1999), p.149). Illustrative examples from the data, including the speech acts of commanding and asking, are presented below.

4.3.1. Commanding

Commanding is a form of an order where there is an implied task that involves an obligation given from the speaker to the addressee to fulfil (Searl, 1979). The following status update announces a commanding tone that reveals the user's intention to explicitly order the public to commit themselves to the safety rules to protect themselves and the population from the pandemic. The addressee can choose to comply with, disobey or ignore this order. Patriotism and loyalty are also shown in this status update.

4.3.2. Asking

Asking a question encompasses a proposal that incorporates numerous possible responses. In the following status update, the user shares his or her experience and asks readers for suggestions and solutions. The receiver has two options: either responding or just ignoring this request. The user here uses the language to perform different functions; letting the addressees know that s/he is not feeling good and asking them to give a solution.

Some of the directive status updates are religious-oriented, where the sender asks friends and followers to thank Allah for the countless blessings, despite the difficult conditions that people live in today. In the following status update, people are requested to thank Allah for the smelling sense that the user had missed after being infected with COVID-19. These status updates have a good impact, both on the specific receivers who share the same experience and on the sender by obtaining some consolation. Accordingly, specialists can benefit from it by finding solutions or ways to handle this disease.

4.3.3. Advising

Advising is the communicative act with an illocutionary point of getting the addressee to perform the action for his or her own sake with no obligation (Searle, 1976). Thus, it is considered nonimpositive compared to other directive acts, such as commanding and asking, since the speaker's imposition on the addressee is not so strong. It could be executed explicitly using the performative verb advise or implicitly using the if-clause structure.

4.4. Commissives

Commissives are types of expressions that commit a speaker to doing something in the future (Searle, 1976). This act is sparsely used by Facebook users. Certain words indicate that speech acts are commissives, among which are promise, threaten, offer, bid, vow, etc.

4.4.1. Promising

Promising is a communicative act through which a speaker commits to undertaking a future action to benefit the addressee (Searle, 1976). Promises can be made explicitly (e.g., I promise …) or implicitly through conditional forms (I will be there if you phone me early). In the first status update below, the speaker explicitly makes a promise to the addressees that there will be a party upon the end of the pandemic.

4.4.2. Suggesting

Suggesting is an act that is voluntarily performed by the speaker who leaves to the hearer the option to accept or reject his or her proposition. This act does not imply any kind of imposition on the addressees to accept it; rather, they are free to accept or refuse it (Kratzer et al., 1991). The first part of this example shows the commissive act, which represents a future action. The directive act is conveyed in the second part by asking the receiver to give suggestions. In the second example, the user uses this act to promise the receivers an invitation to a future event.

The following examples highlight this act.

Considering the second example below, during the first wave of the coronavirus, the government locked down most public places, such as wedding venues. Consequently, several couples had their weddings at home, reducing their wedding expenses.

5. Discussion

This study aims to identify the types of speech acts, their frequencies and their functions in FSUs during COVID-19. In light of Searle's SA framework, the findings of this study show that various types of speech acts (e.g., expressives, assertives, directives, and commissives) are used, most of which are conveyed in a humorous way. Expressives are the most frequent type of speech acts used in FSUs. Speech acts highlight cultural themes, as they can be realized only through a cultural context.

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, people tend to communicate more by expressing their feelings in this difficult situation. Nevertheless, the current status makes social media the only place where people can freely express their opinions and thoughts. Social media platforms transfer effective messages, which are globally well received (Eghdam. et al., 2018). Unarguably, Facebook has been recognized as one of the most effective online devices in linking and inspiring communities with various groups of people (Harris, 2020). Many researchers claim that Facebook status updates show and reveal users’ perspectives and affection in addition to permitting them to share their daily activities (Banikalef et al., 2014). Therefore, this study aims to identify the speech acts in Facebook status updates during COVID-19.

The frequent usage of expressive speech acts can be attributed to the fact that disasters and diseases affect the way people communicate and the language they use (Anggraeni et al., 2020). People's responses and comments about COVID-19 have diversely led to many “infodemic” and negative emotions, which have spread because of this long-wave event. In light of this, this study might be useful for researchers and specialists who have interests in linguistics, psychology, and politics to understand the behaviours (ideologies) of Jordanians and the impact of COVID-19 on them.

People's mental health may be harmed by severe security procedures, such as quarantine and lockdown. This has been accentuated in previous research on people's reactions to SARS in 2003 and the Ebola virus in 2014, where pandemic-associated policies had a significant detrimental impact on people (Su et al., 2020). Thus, examining speech acts in a specific context allows for a better understanding of the target society's social system, since people's actions mirror their thoughts and feelings.

As in this study, studying people's language and reactions to COVID-19 on Facebook is critical for understanding the psychological influence on citizens as well as the community's linguistic trends. That the expressive speech act is the dominant type matches the findings reported in (Ilyas and Khushi, 2012) and (Carr et al., 2009). More specifically, the finding that complaining is the most frequently used type of expressive speech act is consistent with findings in (Anggraeni et al., 2020).

The findings of the study revealed that most speech acts were specifically expressed in a humorous way. These outcomes contrast with the findings in (Banikalef et al., 2014), which indicated that Jordanians tend to be more serious and less humorous due to the prevailing strict norm to prove manhood and the political and economic conditions. However, the humorous way through which these speech acts are manifested can be attributed to several reasons: the COVID-19 crisis has a large influence on people's lives, including the way they receive and react to the pandemic. Additionally, Jordanians' community is known for population diversity by virtue of its high rate of refugees. Therefore, this may have caused Jordanians to accept new cultural and social norms in addition to their openness to other civilizations. Remarkably, engaging Jordanians with these societies contributes to intercultural exchange even on the level of humour and jokes. In short, this proposition demolishes the stereotyped image of frowning among Jordanians.

According to (Gallup, 2022), Jordan was ranked as the world's fifth most stressed country, with one of the lowest positive experiences and adverse experiences such as physical pain, anxiety, despair, and anger. As a result, Jordanians mostly use humour and sarcasm to escape reality and relieve stress. Thus, the results of the present study mesh well with Hussein and Aljamili's (Hussein and Aljamili, 2020) finding that social media assists Jordanians in the alleviation of pandemic anxiety loads. Our results are also in line with Ogungbe (2020), who found that most users proliferate jokes, caricatures, and sarcastic videos to deport dread and gloom, and with Lynch (2002), who found that a humorous message had been interpreted as funny, either intentionally or unintentionally, and Plato (1861), who claimed that when we laugh, we mix pain and pleasure. Humour can be elicited to release pent-up emotions due to negative social and environmental experiences (Holmes and Marra, 2002). According to psychoanalysis theory, humour acts as a defence mechanism to help people fight against negative events (Ren and Guo, 2020; Guo and Ren, 2020). Thus, most users proliferate jokes, caricature and sarcastic videos to deport dread and gloom. Recall that crisis-motivated humour (CMH) on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic is identified as a way that may be used to understand the real-life experiences of others (Ogungbe, 2020). CMH is any joke produced as a coping technique for challenging people's social, political, or health incidents that cause psychological problems. To this end, our results support the notion that jokes function as a satire of people's social, economic, and health realities, as they reduce and reinforce social inequalities while strengthening people's sense of connectedness (Mey, 2001). In addition, they reflect people's attitudes towards the government regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Furthermore, most people avoid expressing their opinions about political issues directly. Consequently, they look for ways to address important issues in an indirect, interesting way. One such way is to use humour. Using humour performs different functions: escaping embarrassment, increasing social influence and offering a way out, meaning that users can withdraw by saying it is only a joke. In this regard, understanding humour is fundamental to comprehending the culture of this community and makes sensitive topics more approachable.

It is observed that people tend to use indirect speech acts more often than using direct ones. Most status updates combine both verbal and pictorial features to transfer the messages distinctly. This means that in most cases, meaning is implied rather than directly stated. According to (Guo and Ren, 2020), the indirect strategy requires many fundamental pragmatic strategies to provide the appropriate illocutionary force. Thus, people recognize indirect speech acts by speculating about the speaker's intentions. This result can be attributed to the fact that indirect communicative acts tend to be more polite because they increase optionality and lessen the imposition (Leech, 1983; Brown and Levinson, 1987). Performing speech acts indirectly is viewed as appropriate to the political conduct of social situations (Watts, 2003). This result is consistent with other researchers' finding (Ellison et al., 2007) that indirect exposure of the speakers' actual intention is a reasonable technique to avoid or attenuate threatening the addressees' face and arouse their sympathy. Indirectness can be a distinctive feature of Jordanians being from a high-context culture, according to Hall's (Hall, 1976) model and as confirmed by researchers (Al-Khatib, 2006; Al-khawaldeh and Abu Rahmeh, 2022; Alkhaza'leh, 2016; Al-Khawaldeh and Hijlah, 2018; Al Kayed and Al-Ghoweri, 2019). It is interpreted as courtesy and face saving.

Another function derived from the analysed data is identity construction. In general, people try their best to prove themselves and show their presence. Constructing identity is achieved through the manifestation of reputation and practices and sharing information as a way to manage rapport with other people on social media platforms (Ren and Guo, 2020; Guo and Ren, 2020; Zappavigna, 2014; Valentinsson, 2018). Boosting visibility for identity construction can be attained by applying different techniques, such as hashtags, photos, hyperlinks and special methods of interaction that show confidence in the audience (Page, 2013).

The findings of this research show how FSUs can help in emerging socialization patterns and reinforce the construction of identity. As Hills (Hills et al., 2009, p.115) notes, “The personalization, or cultural process of individualization, suggests that digital culture is powerfully linked to forms of self-identity, self-expression and self-display”. The hashtag are is considered a meta-speech act and a multifunctional linguistic device, one that enables users to articulate their identity and represent their ideology effortlessly. Integrating hashtags with posts can have extra value (see the Appendix). For instance, many users spread the hashtag (#binshaf w-bi bmu:t), reacting to a health minister who used the same words about COVID-19 in a speech. This in turn could contribute to the significance of intertextuality in shaping users’ identity. Thus, “hashtags can show that you are part of some sort of social construct” (Oomens, 2017, p.52).

Additionally, young adults use English in some expressions in FSUs, such as (thank you, hi all, can you …, please, I love you, miss you, pandemic, virus), which contributes to constructing identity in a second language, resulting in global identity (Cotoc, 2017). English is frequently used as a code-switched language by foreign learners of English (Oomens, 2017; Cotoc, 2017; Androutsopoulos, 2015). This confirms that English is a fundamental language in Facebook communication, as in (Ellison et al., 2007). Code switching can be used in Facebook updates to quote, emphasize a piece of information, use cultural terms, or reiterate an idea as in (Halim and Maros, 2014).

Notably, it appears that in a crisis situation, people tend to express their feelings more than on normal days. Indeed, COVID-19 plays a crucial role in forming users' linguistic behaviour. The epidemic spread rapidly during COVID-19. Researchers (Di Domenico et al., 2021) suggest that social media platforms facilitate the rapid transmission of false information. This “digital pollution” affects people's response to the pandemic, manipulates, and misleads them (Fulgoni and Lipsman, 2017). Observing FSUs reveals that ordinary people (not educated) and women tend to proliferate fake news more. Several people link COVID-19 and vaccines with conspiracy theories. It is believed that conspiracy theories are motivated by “illusory pattern perception” (Prooijen, 2018, Sloat, 2020, p. 40). In a crisis, affected people take in information, process information, and act on it differently compared to the way they handle information during noncrisis times. As a result, people may exaggerate their communication responses. People accept and respread these rumours for various reasons; their ideologies, figured worlds, and beliefs align with this fake content. Thus, Facebook helps people build their identities by sharing specific personal features and beliefs, as argued by (Balkanize and Bataineh, 2017; Ren and Guo, 2020; Guo and Ren, 2020).

Furthermore, some influencers, who have many followers, propagate infodemic and link it with religion or politics through using pictures, videos, or URLs to make it seem reliable. In addition, some influential people create their propaganda for certain goals by employing their linguistic capacity: using figurative language, speech acts, and certain vocabularies. The present study sheds new light on the impact of social media on language; thus, it opens new research avenues for investigating the digital discourse, which paves the way to examine social behaviour.

6. Conclusion

This study examines the various types of speech acts used in status updates on Facebook during COVID-19 in terms of their forms and communicative functions. They are beneficial in representing human behaviour through social media. As claimed by Altheide (1996), “Social media are consequential in social life.” Therefore, identifying the communicative functions of speech acts helps researchers move from theory to concrete actions. The findings revealed that status updates can be considered a substantial medium for understanding intended human communication. The results revealed that people were inclined mostly to use expressive speech acts for many reasons, such as sharing their experience, showing their presence and constructing their identity. In addition, the crisis has an influence on the way Jordanians communicate and react, revealing that most status updates have incorporated a sense of humour.

This research study has diverse underlying sociolinguistic and sociocultural implications concerning status message updates of social networks. It directs researchers' attention to the significance of investigating the multidimensionality of language. It accentuates that speech act analysis should consider linguistic forms, their communicative functions and the way they are employed as a sort of social action. It highlights status message updates as a rich source for research, particularly for the sake of understanding the integral components of any communicative act, namely, self-presentation, identity construction and sociocultural behaviour. The findings could be a good source for newcomers to easily socialize with Jordanians by looking at how they express speech acts in their languages. Status updates help users convey certain abstract ideas about real phenomena and objects. Through these updates, people's impressions, attitudes, viewpoints and concerns on critical issues can be understood and addressed accordingly. They open up opportunities for facilitating the free expression of themselves and others, leading to collective decision-making for dealing with and solving vital issues in society.

In addition, there are other implications regarding language misuse as a response to some issues on social media. For instance, the results reveal that people yielded many “infodemics” through their COVID-19 status updates. Therefore, there is a need to emphasize the importance of digital communicative competency at educational institutions and on media concerning using language appropriately to build peace and harmony in society. In addition, there is a need to set policies on Facebook that prevent people from posting falsified content. Offering training programs for helping people identify the linguistic patterns of fake news posted on social media and directing them towards using social media platforms appropriately could help in solving many problems.

To this end, this research study investigates only the theme of COVID-19-related Facebook status updates during the COVID-19 pandemic; thus, other themes may be considered in future research. There are some aspects that can be examined in future studies, such as gender-based usage of online discourse and using other online platforms, if the results are consistent with the findings of this study.

Funding source

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Appendix.

The table below shows some examples of FSU: