A Pragmatic Analysis of Intimidation of Receiving COVID-19 Vaccine in Twitter

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the speech acts which convey intimidation of receiving COVID-19 vaccine, and also to examine the utilization of the strategies of intimidation. Tweets have been collected as a data source in the current qualitative study. The data of this study includes ten tweets drawn from public health tweets that has been obtained through purposive sampling from social media (Twitter) to be analyzed pragmatically. The findings indicated that the argument presented in tweets on COVID-19 vaccine was developed persuasively using various strategies of warning and prohibition. The study ends up with conclusions that hesitation of receiving COVID-19 vaccines witnessed by the world have a great impact on the types of speech acts performed by the doctors and health experts resulting in a texts. As well, they were capable of using a variety of strategies of intimidation in their debates. Notably, the application of speech acts and intimidation strategies was connected to the social interaction and contexts, and a reflective of the situation of pandemic and the hesitation about vaccine.