Discourse on Facebook website between teacher and students in the Introduction to Linguistics Group

Abstract

            The present investigation was the study of the language for communicating on Facebook website between a teacher and students. The objective was to analyze the language forms being used in communication between a teacher and 232 students in the Introduction to Linguistics class group. The data was divided into two parts which were postings and comments delivered from the teacher and students. From the data collection, there were 83 postings and 208 comments. The obtained data were analyzed by using speech acts (Searle, 1979) and stylistics analysis (Joos, 1961; Prasitrattanasinthu, 2002, 2003).
The results of speech act analysis showed that assertive speech acts were found the most among the teacher’s posting while the interrogative speech acts were found the most among the students’ postings.
              It revealed that the commissive and directive speech acts were found in teacher’s postings only. Based on stylistics analysis, it was reported that the language styles of the teacher were consultative and casual while student’s language styles were casual and intimate. It was shown that the use of language between the teacher and students still depended on their social status even though their language forms of writing and spelling on this social media may sometimes be informal, differing from standard language. It was suggested that the use of Facebook could be a channel for communicating between teacher and students, but it could neither stimulate the students’ learning nor increase their motivation in learning the course.