Meaning Strategies in Generation Z’s Social Media Utterances in Indonesia: A Hallidayan Functional Linguistics Study

This study examines Generation Z’s distinctive language style on Indonesian social media platforms TikTok and Instagram, focusing on vocabulary choices and strategies used to convey messages to interlocutors. The aim is to analyze meaning strategies in Generation Z’s social media utterances through the lens of systemic functional linguistics. Adopting a descriptive qualitative approach grounded in literature review, the study uses illustrative data from public posts on Instagram and TikTok by Indonesian Generation Z users. The analysis draws on Halliday’s three metafunctions—ideational, interpersonal, and textual. Findings reveal that Generation Z’s social media utterances display a marked tendency toward interpersonal expressivity, condensed yet creative textual structures, and a dominance of emotional and identity-driven themes in the ideational function. These insights suggest that functional linguistics remains a highly pertinent framework for interpreting the dynamics of contemporary digital language.