Expositive Acts on Instagram: Knowing What People Intent to “Write” on their Captions through Pragmatics Perspective

Amirudin Amirudin, Sulis Triyono

Abstract


Instagram as one of the famous social network sites in this century is as one way to share various kinds of general information and to present our activities, events, achievements, vacations, and so forth. The present study explored expositive acts presented in the caption of Instagram-posting by Indonesian users. It is interesting that expositive acts used are to emphasize self-presentation on their posting. 734 photo-posting with caption from 15 participants were found. The expositive acts performed by the participants were classified based on the kinds of expositive acts as proposed by Austin (1962). The factors initiating each kind of expositive acts were described. The representation of self-presentation on expositive acts was discussed. The present study found ten kinds of expositive acts which were also identified as the communicative intention presented in their Intagram-posting with caption, namely: apprising, describing, affirming, supposing, remarking, informing, postulating, confirming, arguing, and telling. Finally, the present study offer implication for further study that the caption used in this social medium is as another valuable aspect in Instagram for emphasizing self-presentation phenomena, in which this caption is also incorporated with communicative intention by the users implicitly or explicitly addressed to others.

Keywords


Pragmatic Analysis, Speech Act, Expositive Act, Social Network Site, Instagram

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ahadzadeh, A. S., Sharif, S. P., & Ong, F. S. (2017). Self-schema and Self-Discrepancy Mediate the Influence of Instagram Usage on Body Image Satisfaction among Youth. Computers in Human Behavior, 68, 8-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.11.011

Andalibi, N., Ozturk, P., & Forte, A. (2017). Sensitive Self-disclosures, Responses, and Social Support on Instagram: The Case of #Depression. CSCW, 1485-1500. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998243

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. London: Oxford University Press.

Carr, C. T., Schrock, D. B., & Dauterman, P. (2012). Speech Acts Within Facebook Status Messages. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 31 (2) 176-196. DOI: 10.1177/0261927X12438535

Djafarova, E., & Rushworth, C. (2017). Exploring the Credibility of Online Celebrities’ Instagram Profile in Influencing the Purchase Desicions of Young Female Users. Computers in Human Behavior, 68, 1-7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.11.009

Fardouly, J., Willburger, B. K., & Vartanian, L. R. (2017). Instagram Use and Young Women’s Body Image Concerns and Self-objectification: Testing Mediational Pathways. New Media & Society, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817694499

Farina, M. (2015). Facebook First Telling. Journal of Pragmatics, 90, 1-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.10.005

Ferwerda, B., Schedi, M., & Tkalcic, M. (2015). Predicting Personality Traits with Instagram Pictures. EMPIRE’ 15, 16-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2809643.2809644

Filimonov, K., Russmann, U., & Svensson, J. (2016). Picturing the Party: Instagram and Party Campaigning in the 2014 Swedish Elections. Social Media + Society, 1-11. DOI: 10.1177/2056305116662179

Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An Introduction to Language. (9th ed.). Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, (Chapter 4).

Grunberg, A. (2011). Saying and Doing: Speech Actions, Speech Acts and Related Events. European Journal of Philosophy, 1-27. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2011.00481.x

Grundlingh, L. (2017). Memes as Speech Acts. Social Semiotics, DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2017.1303020

Igwedibia, A. (2018). Grice’s Conversational Implicature: A Pragmatics Analysis of Selected Poems of Audre Lorde. IJALEL, 7 (1), 120-129. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.1p.120

Jackson, C. A., & Luchner, A. F. (2017). Self-presentation Mediates the Relationship between Self-criticism and Emotional Response to Instagram Feedback. Personality and Individual Differences. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.04.052

Kissine, M. (2009). Illocutionary Forces and What is Said. Mind & Language, 24 (1), 122-138.

Kohn, A. (2015). Instagram as a Naturalized Propaganda Tool: The Israel Defense Forces Web Site and the Phenomenon of Shared Values. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 1-17. DOI: 10.1177/1354856515592505

Koussouhon, L. A., & Dadjo, S. D. Y. (2016). Pragmatic Analyses of President Goodluck Jonathan’s Concession Speech and General Muhammadu Buhari’s Acceptance Speech: A Comparative Appraisal. IJALEL, 5 (4), 12-19. doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.5n.4p.12

Lee, E. et al. (2015). Picture Speak Louder than Words: Motivations for Using Instagram. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 18 (9), 552-556. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2015.0157

Mahoney, J. et al. (2016). Constructing the Visual Online Political Self: An Analysis of Instagram Use by the Scottish Electorate. Politics on Social Media, 3339-3351. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858160

Moon, J. H. et al. (2016). The Role of Narcissism in Self-promotion on Instagram. Personality and Individual Differences, 101, 22-25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.05.042

Nadkarni, A., & Hofmann, S. G. (2012). Why do People Use Facebook? Personality and Individual Differences, 52 (3), 243-249. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.11.007

Oishi, E., & Fetzer, A. (2016). Expositives in Discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 96, 49-59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.03.005

Pittman, M., & Reich, B. (2016). Social Media and Loneliness: Why an Instagram Picture may be Worth more than a Thousand Twitter Words. Computer in Human Behavior, 62, 155-167. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.03.084

Sheldon, P., & Bryant, K. (2016). Instagram: Motives for its Use and Relationship to Narcissism and Contextual Age. Computer in Human Behavior, 58, 89-97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.12.059

Schwartz, R., & Halegoua, G. R. (2014). The Spatial Self: Location-Based Identity Performance on Social Media. New Media & Society, 1-18. DOI: 10.1177/1461444814531364

Scott, K. (2015). The Pragmatics of Hastags: Inference and Conversational Style on Twitter. Journal of Pragmatics, 81, 8-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.03.015

Smith, L. R., & Sanderson, J. (2015). I’m Going to Instagram It! An Analysis of Athlete Self-presentation on Instagram. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59 (2), 342-358. DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2015.1029125

Sudaryanto, (2015). Metode dan Aneka Teknik Analisis Bahasa: Pengantar Penelitian Wahana Kebudayaan Secara Linguistik. Yogyakarta: Sanata Dharma University Press.

Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language. (4th ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press, (chapter 10).

Zuniga, H. G., Molyneux, L. & Zheng, P. (2014). Social Media, Political Expression, and Political Participation: Panel Analysis of Lagged and Concurrent Relationships. Journal of Communication, 64, 612–634. DOI:10.1111/jcom.12103




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.4p.129

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.