LEARN Journal: Language Education and Acquisition Research Network (ISSN: 2630-0672 (Print) | ISSN: 2672-9431 (Online) Volume: 14, No: 1, January – June 2021 Language Institute, Thammasat University https://so04.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/LEARN/index Cyberbullying: The Case of Public Figures Suriya Saengpranga,*, Savitri Gadavanijb a
[email protected], School of Language and Communication, National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand b
[email protected], School of Language and Communication, National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand * Corresponding author,
[email protected] APA Citation: Gadavanij, S., & Saengprang, S. (2021). Cyberbullying: The case of public figures. LEARN Journal: Language Education and Acquisition Research Network, 14(1), 344-369. Received Abstract 05/08/2020 Received in Cyberbullying has become a serious global issue. Previous revised form studies focusing on the prevalence and the consequences of 26/10/2020 cyberbullying have paid little attention to its linguistic Accepted features, especially in celebrity cases. This current study fills 10/11/2020 this gap by investigating the language that constitutes cyberbully toward celebrities from different cultures. Data Keywords were collected from the Instagram accounts of two cyberbullying, speech acts, celebrities representing Asian and Western culture, one is celebrities, Korean, and another one is British. This study employed the cultural notion of cyberbullying (Patchin & Hinduja, 2006; Smith et differences, Instagram al., 2008) to label bully comments and categorized them into cyberbullying’s type (Willard, 2006). Moreover, speech acts theory was employed to identify the intention of those comments distinguishing cyberbullying from other aggression. To compare the similarities and differences between the two cultures, direct and indirect speech acts were used.