Celebrities’ Debunking Rumours and Misinterpretations: A Case Study of BTS’ Namjoon’s Letter on Weverse Through Pragmastylistic Analysis

Abstract

The phenomenon of debunking rumours and misinterpretations has been investigated in its general terms without considering celebrities’ emotions through linguistic expressions and speech acts. This research aimed to conduct a case study incorporating pragmastylistic analysis of BTS’ RM’s letter (2022) on Weverse to debunk BTS’ disbandment rumours and misinterpretations about BTSFESTA. The study also determined to scrutinize the types of speech acts used in order to clear certain propositions and assumptions. The study employed a qualitative research method to address the research questions. The theoretical framework was based on Speech Act theory (Austin, 1962) to analyse the speech acts in the letter under felicity conditions (Leech, 1962). The findings of the study suggested that Namjoon used simple and declarative statements performing hybrid speech acts such as expressive, commissive, directive, expositive, verdictive, etc. Mostly, the speech acts were inclined towards expositive and commissive expressions to clear certain ambiguities and make commitments to manage to do this in future as well. This study was methodologically significant for incorporating pragmastylistic analysis to study the language of celebrities’ debunking rumours on social media. The study recommended the future researchers to take both celebrities’ voices and pragmastylistic analysis together to reach various conclusions and novel findings.