DECODING THE DIGITAL SUBTEXT: A STUDY OF PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE—FROM DEIXIS TO SPEECH ACTS—IN SOCIAL MEDIA DISCOURSE

This study explores how meaning is constructed and interpreted in social media discourse through pragmatic competence, with particular emphasis on decoding digital subtext. It focuses on how deixis and speech acts function as key pragmatic mechanisms for expressing both explicit and implicit meanings in online communication. In digital platforms, users frequently rely on context-dependent expressions, indirect language, and multimodal cues such as emojis and hashtags to convey intended meanings. A qualitative descriptive approach was used to examine pragmatic features in social media interactions. The analysis is based on pragmatic and discourse analytical frameworks, particularly speech act theory and deixis theory. The findings show that person and temporal deixis are the most commonly used forms, while expressive speech acts dominate online communication. The study also reveals that irony, indirectness, and contextual signals are widely used to convey subtext and implied meanings. The research demonstrates that pragmatic competence is essential for interpreting hidden meanings in social media discourse, where meaning is highly context-dependent and often constructed beyond literal language.