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Article published In:
Language and Dialogue
Vol. 11:2 (2021) ► pp.223–245

#StayHome – A pragmatic analysis of COVID-19 health advice in Saudi and Australian tweets

| Prince Sultan University

The current study aimed to examine how the government departments of health in Saudi Arabia and Australia provided health advice to the public through Twitter during the COVID-19 crisis. To this end, 100 Saudi and 100 Australian tweets were analysed by using Martínez-Flor’s (2003) advice linguistic realization strategies typology and an adapted version of Trosborg’s (1995) coding scheme for internal modifiers. The external modifiers that emerged in the data were also examined. The results showed a general tendency to use direct advice-giving strategies among Saudis and Australians. Statistical comparisons showed that Saudis used significantly more direct advice-giving strategies and external modifiers than Australians while Australians employed significantly more conventionally indirect strategies and internal modifiers than Saudis.

Keywords: speech act, advising, health communication, Twitter, mixed game model, Saudi Arabia, Australia
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Mixed game model
    • 2.2Studies on the speech act of giving advice
    • 2.3Studies on advice-giving in the health context
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data collection
    • 3.2Data coding
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1What are the advice-giving strategies the health departments in Saudi Arabia and Australia prefer to use in their tweets?
    • 4.2How similar and/or different are the advice-giving strategies used by the health departments in Saudi Arabia and Australia in their tweets?
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 18 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00089.dak
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