Abstract
Vaccines have been an important topic in recent years due to the prevalence of COVID-19. Discussions were mainly conducted online during this period, which makes COVID-19 discussion forums a great place to start examining the discourse surrounding this topic. The objective of this study is to examine the speech act strategies performed by participants in an online forum on their perception of COVID-19 vaccine side effects and how they promote or influence others with their viewpoints. The study extracted 7 pages or 105 posts, from a forum called Veda (Vestibular [inner-ear and brain balance] Disorder Association) as the data. Participants of different beliefs in the forum shared their thoughts upon taking the vaccine through the forum’s “Covid-19 Vaccine Side Effects” tab. Using Searle’s Speech Act Theory, the study first identified the types of speech acts performed. Then, each of the posts were categorised into three groups (pro, anti and vaccine-hesitant groups) based on the content and previous posts made by the same participant. Findings revealed that assertives (46.9%) were the most prominent speech act, amongst all three groups. The pro and anti groups who had a firmer position on vaccination used more assertives as compared to vaccine-hesitant groups who used slightly more directives to request answers or clarifications. Declaration (1.9%) speech acts were used the least frequently since participants did not possess a special institutional role to bring about changes in real-life other than possibly influencing the perceptions of other participants.Keywords: speech act theory, online forum, COVID-19, vaccines, computer-mediated communication, synchronous discussions
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