From Vlogpologies to Digital Dialogues: Decoding YouTubers' Speech Act and Audience Comments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14456/jlapsu.2023.9Keywords:
speech act of apology, YouTubers, comments analysis, types of tonesAbstract
This study aims to investigate the apology strategies used by famous YouTubers in their vlogpologies, as well as to explore the potential relationship between these strategies and the tones expressed in the comment section. The researchers employed purposive sampling to select eight video clips created by eight well-known YouTubers, along with the top ten most-liked comments of each video, resulting in a total of eighty comments. The speech act set developed by Cohen and Olshtain (1981) was utilized as a schema to analyze the apology strategies. Zhang's (2016) content analysis approach was applied to code, categorize, and interpret the tones expressed in the comments in addition to the tone interpretation method proposed by Pearl and Steyvers (2013). The findings indicated that acknowledgement of responsibility, expression of apology, and explanation or account were the most frequently used strategies. The analysis of the comments section revealed that the tones expressed in response to the videos were divided between positive and negative feedback, with some videos receiving mixed responses. However, no significant relationship was observed between the apology strategies and the tones expressed in the comments. The results of this study have implications for our understanding of the dynamics of speech act of apology in the digital era and highlight the importance of considering various factors that can influence audience responses to apologies, i.e. intensity of offense, familiarity with the person being apologized to, or relative authority that each of an interactant has (CARLA, 2021).
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Copyright (c) 2023 Pitichon Muangkaew, Autsadee Poonkaew, Piyatida Idsa, Phrueksa Kaewgonnoi, Uraiwan Rattanapan Noonkong
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