Analysis of Speech Act Performance in Four Khmer-Language Online Newspapers: Content related to Coronavirus or Covid-19 pandemics

Abstract

This paper reports on research conducted to identify the speech act performances in articles in four Khmer-language online newspapers covering the Coronavirus or Covid-19 pandemic in Cambodia. John Searle's (1975) speech act theory has been adopted as the primary framework for categorizing speech act performances. Two datasets were collected approximately six months apart (23-29, 2020 January and 23-29 July 2020). Overall, the most frequent type of illocutionary speech act in both the headlines and the body text of the articles was the assertives. Notably, an increasing frequency of directives type speech acts was discerned in the later dataset (July 2020) in the body text of the articles especially. The study, we believe, further highlights the potential usefulness of the application of Searle's speech act framework in analyzing public health media content and accords well with relevant earlier findings established by Al-Hidawi & Ali (2018) and Qomariyah (2019).