THE LINGUISTICS FEATURES OF HATE SPEECH AND SOCIAL CRITICS ON SOCIAL MEDIA: AN ANALYSIS OF FORENSIC LINGUISTICS = THE LINGUISTICS FEATURES OF HATE SPEECH AND SOCIAL CRITICS ON SOCIAL MEDIA: AN ANALYSIS OF FORENSIC LINGUISTICS

WAHYUNINGSI FAHRAH. The Linguistics Features of Hate Speech and Social Critics on Social Media: An Analysis of Forensic Linguistics. (supervised by Sukmawaty and Harlinah Sahib).
This study aimed to identify the linguistics features of hate speech and social critics on social media obtained by the Sinjai government, and the implication of law consequences of hate speech and social critic’s features. To carry out this analysis, the study employed a descriptive qualitative methodology in interpreting the data. The data were obtained from social media platform especially from Facebook group of Sinjai society, then, other data was attained from Sinjai District Police, State Prosecutor’s Office of Sinjai, and Sinjai District Court. The data were analyzed using a forensic linguistics approach relying on pragmatics theories. The result showed that the features of hate speech centralized on annoyance, dislike, displeasure, and persuasive sentence such as “I swear in the Name of Allah,” “an arrogant and haughty leader”, “be careful ”, “excrement”, and “Sinjai will be sold”, then the features of social critics focus on criticizing such as “misguided”, “clever,” “our economy is running well”, “best applaud if build infrastructure not from loan”, “need a genuine regent”, and “laughed if a women is a leader”. Meanwhile the data of the implication of law consequences revealed that the hate speech cases are complaint offense, and there are no law consequences of social critics’ cases, it includes as freedom of speech. The study concluded that all features that are obtained by the Sinjai government that oriented on annoyance, dislike, and displeasure are included as hat speech, while the features oriented on criticizing include into social critics. This study contributed into forensic linguistics field especially the difference between hate speech and social critics’ features.

Keywords: Forensic Linguistics, Hate Speech, Linguistics Features, Social Critics, Implication of Law Consequences.