Transformasi Pragmatik di Era Big Data: Kesantunan Berbahasa pada Kontroversi Ahmad Sahroni di Media Sosial

Abstract

The era of Big Data has reconstructed the communicative practices of society. Social media, as the most massive space for public interaction, has generated new patterns of politeness that are more fluid, expressive, and often marked by tension. The controversy surrounding Ahmad Sahroni, a member of the Indonesian House of Representatives, who described the call to “dissolve the DPR” as the attitude of “the world’s stupidest people,” provides a compelling case for analysis. This utterance triggered a wave of public criticism on social media, particularly on X (Twitter) and TikTok. This study aims to: (1) identify the dominance of bald-on-record strategies in public criticism, (2) examine the use of sarcasm and humor as forms of digital politeness, and (3) analyze the intensification of impoliteness practices as a consequence of anonymity and social media algorithms. M Employing a descriptive qualitative approach and pragmatic discourse analysis, this study draws on Searle’s speech act theory, Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, and Yus’s cyberpragmatics perspective. The findings reveal that public criticism was dominated by bald-on-record strategies, characterized by direct attacks on Sahroni. In addition, sarcasm and political humor emerged as distinctive forms of digital politeness within online spaces. The study also demonstrates that impoliteness practices increased significantly due to user anonymity and social media algorithms that tend to amplify the visibility of extreme comments. This study underscores the need to update classical politeness frameworks in order to better understand the dynamics of digital political communication in the era of Big Data.