Journal of Language and Literature Studies
Vol. 6 No. 2 (2026): June

Illocutionary Acts Used in Hate Speech Comments on Zohran Mamdani’s Official TikTok Account

Aisyah, Siti Haifa Nur (Unknown)
Wardoyo, Cipto (Unknown)
Fauzi , Erfan Muhammad (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
23 Jun 2026

Abstract

Political discourses on TikTok frequently qualify by short and emotionally charged comments that may serve not just as statements of disagreement but also as forms of hate speech and communicative action. However, studies that have examined the association between hate speech forms and illocutionary act functions in political TikTok comments are relatively restricted. The research intends to identify the forms of hate speech and examine the illocutionary act functions discovered in comments on the official TikTok account of Zohran Mamdani. In this research a qualitative descriptive method with pragmatic approach and qualitative content analysis was applied. The data comprised of 67 selected public comments from ten movies on TikTok released in November 2025. The comments were purposively sampled based on hate speech indicators adopted from the Indonesian National Police Circular Number SE/6/X/2015 and examined using Searle’s theory of illocutionary acts. The results demonstrate four types of hate speech: insult, accusation/defamation, provocation and threat. The most dominant type was insult with (27 comments), followed by accusation/defamation (23 comments), provocation (14 comments) and threat (3 comments). The comments performed mainly expressive, forceful and directive acts as illocutionary functions. The results indicate that political comments on TikTok contain hate speech not just to express bad feelings but also to construct negative political images and influence the perspective of the audience. This research contributes to pragmatic studies by demonstrating how short political comments on TikTok function as significant communicative activities in the digital political discourse.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

jolls

Publisher

Subject

Education Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media Other

Description

Journal of Language and Literature Studies is an open access journal which provides perspectives of languages, language teaching, and literature studies. This journal has the Focus and Scope at presenting and discussing outstanding contemporary issues in line with Applied Linguistics, English ...