What Factors Influence the Meaning of Smiling Emoji in WeChat Conversation

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.