Hate Speech: The Phenomenon of Offensive Language

Abstract

A characteristic inherent in a democratic State is a guarantee of freedom of opinion
 and expression by every citizen. However, the space for freedom cannot be misused
 to express various ideas or views so that it becomes a tool to attack human rights and
 the freedom of others manifested in the form of hate speech. Acts of hate speech
 are currently getting more and more attention from various circles, not only for law
 enforcers and practitioners, politicians, information and communication technology
 experts. But it is also a very serious concern for the Indonesian government to form
 and give birth to regulations concerning to handling of hate speech. Moreover, caring
 for diversity and harmonization in diversity in the era of globalization of information
 technology is the biggest challenge today. In this study, phenomenology is used as
 research design whereas purposive sampling from online media is used to collect
 the data. The aim is to maintain unity in the midst of a multicultural community life
 such as Batu Bara. On the other hand, the emergence of discussions about hate
 speech actually gave the object of a new study for linguistics. Based on the linguistic
 perspective, hate speech is a phenomenon of offensive language that can present
 linguistic data and can be analyzed linguistically. Therefore, this article conceptually
 describes the role of linguistics and linguists in understanding and explaining the
 subject of hate speech.