Implicature, Politeness, and the Construction of Power in Indonesian Digital Discourse: A Pragmatic-Critical Case Study of Public Reactions to Viral Policy Debates on Instagram

Abstract

This article examines how Indonesian Instagram users construct public criticism in response to viral policy debates. It focuses on three interconnected pragmatic and critical dimensions: conversational implicature, politeness and impoliteness strategies, and the construction of power between citizens and institutional authority. The study is positioned within digital literacy because public comments on social media are not merely emotional reactions; they are digital texts that require critical reading of implied meanings, source context, platform affordances, and power relations. Methodologically, the article uses a qualitative case-study design with pragmatic-critical discourse analysis. The preliminary data consist of anonymized public-comment examples and verified contextual data on Indonesian digital use and policy debates. The analysis shows that users frequently rely on sarcastic implicature, rhetorical questions, indirect criticism, contrastive statements, mock politeness, and bald-on-record criticism to question policy legitimacy. These strategies construct citizens as burdened subjects, resistant publics, and moral evaluators of authority. The article argues that Indonesian digital discourse should be read as a meaningful site of civic interpretation, where ordinary users negotiate trust, accountability, and symbolic resistance through short but powerful linguistic forms. The study contributes to pragmatics, critical discourse studies, and digital-literacy education by showing how Instagram comments can be used as authentic material for teaching critical interpretation of language and power in digital environments.