Directive and Expressive Speech Acts in Support Heroes’ Voice Lines: Enhancing Team Coordination in Mobile Legends

Voice lines are a distinctive feature of online multiplayer games that not only add character
identity but also serve important communication functions in coordinating team play. This
study focuses on the directive and expressive speech acts found in the voice lines of the Support
heroes of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, in a bid to uncover their pragmalinguistic role in
improving team synergy. Based on Searle’s (1975) speech act theory, a qualitative descriptive
approach drawing on these characteristics proposes that 75 voice lines of 14 Support heroes
were used and categorized into directive and expressive, along with their subcategories. The
findings show that directive acts—such as commanding, urging, requesting, advising, warning,
and offering—primarily function as strategic cues that regulate team actions and synchronize
tactical decisions. Meanwhile, expressive acts—including encouraging, reassuring, valuing,
stating belief, motivating, criticizing, complaining, and emotional expressions—serve to
sustain morale, reinforce solidarity, and establish the supportive identity of these heroes. The
results highlight that voice lines, though pre-scripted and non-interactive, perform meaningful
communicative roles in multiplayer digital environments by combining emotional resonance
with tactical alignment. This study not only extends the application of speech act theory into
the domain of online games but also provides practical insights for linguists, digital
communication scholars, and game developers regarding the design of in-game language as a
tool for both strategic coordination and maintaining team morale.