ILLOCUTIONARY FORCE IN POLITICIANS' TWEETS: A STUDY OF IMRAN KHAN AND BILAWAL BHUTTO'S TWITTER DISCOURSE

Abstract

This study aims to analyze illocutionary speech acts using a mixed method approach in the political discourse produced on Twitter by two leading Pakistani political leaders, Imran Khan and Bilawal Bhutto. Data was collected in text form from the public Twitter handles of both aforementioned politicians. Alston’s taxonomy of speech acts was used to tag data through the UAM Corpus Tool. The findings of the study reveal that both politicians use more assertives, followed by expressives, and a few instances of directives. However, they completely avoid the use of directives and exercitives because of their limited power and political roles. This study has implications for the general public as well as academicians in the field of Applied Linguistics and Mass Communication, as this will provide them with an insight into political discourse and the possible intentions behind the language use of their political leaders.