A Pragmatic Study of Speech Acts Pertaining to Health Advice in Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

People use the language to make propositional statements, entities, objects, state of affairs, and so on and fulfil functions such as apologising, introducing, requesting and denying, etc. Speech act can be described as the action performed in uttering something, and the directives are functions to direct people's behaviour. Advice is a directive speech act. Different linguists classified the advice into direct, indirect, and conventionally indirect. The use of advice has been applied in communication and the written form of humankind for a long time. The speaker intended to give benefit to the hearer when he /she gives advice. The present study intended to shed light on the notion of the pragmatics of communication of health advice in covid -19. The data of this study were fifteen public health advice related to covid-19 collected from the official website of the World Health Organisation (WHO). They have been analysed pragmatically based on their type, strategies, and advisories. The study also aims to find out the consciousness of EFL learners with the health advice of covid-19 and what degree of conciseness comes and literal comprehension. The results of the pragmatic analysis have shown that the frequent type of advice is directive, the frequent strategy is imperative, and the frequent advisories is advising. At the same time, the results of the conducted interview have shown full consciousness, partial consciousness, and non-consciousness of the health advice of covid-19.