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Title Cyberbullying: A Forensic Linguistic Analysis of Social Media Memes

Author(s) Rakhshanda Elahi

Abstract In the present time, people find it easy to threaten, abuse, swear, and humiliate others through social media and yet they are ignorant of the fact that they are involved in crimes of language. The basic reason is that they are not aware of the crimes of language and keep on infringing the rights of social media users. Keeping in mind this situation, an exploration was needed to highlight unseen crimes through language from a legal perspective. This study used research tools informed by pragmatics while keeping the forensic ends in view. The researcher explored criminal use of speech acts in memes on social media sites. For this purpose, 35 memes were selected from 25 pages and 25 groups on Facebook. Data were collected through purposive sampling. The objectives were to identify and categorize speech acts in memes, explore possible motivating factors behind the use of such memes and evaluate their socio-legal sensitivities. Analysis of speech acts was conducted with the help of Pragmatic Act Theory presented by Mey (2001), whereas Speech Act Theory by Austin (1962) was relied on for general classification of speech acts. To highlight socio-legal sensitivities related to the memes in various forms of cyberbullying, its conceptualization propounded by Willard (2007) was used as a theoretical ground. The assistance from a professional lawyer was sought throughout the project to have an expert opinion on the matter of cyberbullying in memes. The lawyer assisted during the process of selection of relevant memes. During the process of data analysis, descriptive and interpretative analysis was carried out by keeping both frameworks side by side. It has been found that memes containing various speech acts represent different forms of cyberbullying. The researcher suggested that people should be sensitized to the socio- legal side of such types of practices. The researcher also hoped that the thin line between freedom of expression and cyberbullying would be clearer in future, and implementation of cyberbullying laws would be possible with lesser absurdity. Lastly, keeping in view the basic human rights, it has been suggested that forensic linguistic study focusing on multimodal analysis of videos should be conducted so as to highlight the socio-legally sensitive content on social media sites.

Type Thesis/Dissertation

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2027-10-22

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