Published Article

ABSTRACT

The relevance of the social media cuts across all areas of human endeavour, thereby, making it difficult for anyone to completely ignore the value they offer. An attempt to imagine what a day could be without a moment on any of the social media platforms for any of such reasons as: viewing comments, statuses, pictures, videos, shopping, doing bank transactions, etc. would lay to rest any doubt about the can’t-do-without relevance of the social media. The current study was set out to examine English as Second Language learners’ interaction on social media by looking at the sync between social media posts and comments as they relate to context. The study specifically paid attention to the method of interaction that is adopted and whether the Internet-mediated interaction can still be considered pragmatically acceptable even when certain offline cooperative principles are violated. To achieve these, the descriptive study was adopted. The data for the study were gathered randomly from 28 Facebook users of L2 speakers of English. It analyzed natural data from the online interaction of L2 speakers of English. The interaction is in the form of Facabook posts and comments for the period of one month. Selection was based on posts with only texts (without pictures and videos.) The results showed that contexts and inferences were the tools for effective communication strategies in online media communication.