SPEECH ACT ANALYSIS OF TELEGRAM MESSAGES ON CORONAVIRUS: SOCIAL MEDIA AND FAKE NEWS IN UZBEKISTAN

Abstract

The digital communication across the world has been accumulated by the development of social media, including Uzbekistan.  Since the confirmation of the first case of the COVID-19 in Uzbekistan, a large number of the unconfirmed news on the subject had gone viral on social media which are largely considered by the WHO (World Health Organization) to be false. The aim of this study is to analyze some of those messages on Telegram messenger were circulated across the Uzbekistan. Several messages collected between March- November, 2020 were analyzed using the framework of Austin’s Speech Acts with insights from the Conversational Maxims of Grice’s Cooperative Principles.