What Factors Influence the Meaning of Smiling Emoji in WeChat Conversation

Jihao Tong; Chuming You

doi:10.54254/2753-7064/29/20230533

Research Article

Open access

Published on 19 April 2024

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Tong,J.;You,C. (2024). What Factors Influence the Meaning of Smiling Emoji in WeChat Conversation. Communications in Humanities Research,29,69-81.

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What Factors Influence the Meaning of Smiling Emoji in WeChat Conversation

Jihao Tong *^,1, Chuming You ²

¹ University of Nottingham
² Guangdong Country Garden School

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

https://doi.org/10.54254/2753-7064/29/20230533

Abstract

This paper explores the semantic and pragmatic meaning of smiling emoji occurring with text in Chinese online communication and discovers what factors might have an effect on context meaning. Five top popular smiling emojis from WeChat have been selected to set scenes that are most common in daily life. Based on the multimodal analysis framework, how people use emojis in the text will be analyzed to discover representational, interpersonal, and textual features of emojis. It is found that visual graphic features, age, relationship between interlocutors, and structure can all influence the meaning of emoji. People use different ways to use emoji to achieve their goals and hidden purposes. In general, emojis often occur at the end of the text, substituting or assisting words to achieve speech acts and promote emotional feeling.

Keywords

Multimodal analysis, pragmatics, speech acts, semantic, emojis

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Cite this article

Tong,J.;You,C. (2024). What Factors Influence the Meaning of Smiling Emoji in WeChat Conversation. Communications in Humanities Research,29,69-81.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

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About volume

Volume title: Proceedings of the International Conference on Global Politics and Socio-Humanities

Conference website: https://www.icgpsh.org/

ISBN：978-1-83558-365-4(Print) / 978-1-83558-366-1(Online)

Conference date: 13 October 2023

Editor：Enrique Mallen, Javier Cifuentes-Faura

Series: Communications in Humanities Research

Volume number: Vol.29

ISSN：2753-7064(Print) / 2753-7072(Online)

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