A Pragmatic Analysis of Reactions to Rumors on COVID-19 in Iraq

A rumor is an unverified piece of information that often appear during general health crisis, conflict or war. Studying pragmatic functions of rumors on COVID-19 and vaccination are almost rare. Speech acts, which are a part of pragmatics, mean to perform actions by uttering words or phrases in a certain context. This study investigates how media rumors are functioning as pragmatic messages that influence the modern communication. Additionally, an attention is paid as well to the strategies of impoliteness that appear by the commenters as response to the rumor posted. This research hypothesizes that people use less impoliteness strategies as a reaction to rumor on general health. The second hypothesis assumes that people use only “requesting” as a form of “directive speech act” when the subject matter is about general health.