The pragmatics of text-emoji co-occurrences on Chinese social media

Pragmatics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Xiran Yang ◽  
Meichun Liu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Chinese Text ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Central Research ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Verbal Language ◽  
Multimodal Analysis ◽  
Functional Patterns ◽  
Chinese Social Media

Abstract This paper explores the pragmatics of emojis co-occurring with or embedded in text on Chinese social media with this central research question: what are the patterns and the communicative functions manifested by emojis in co-occurrence with Chinese text? Building on the metafunctional approach of multimodal analysis, popular online posts from Sina Weibo which contain both emoji(s) and text have been collected and analyzed to discover the representational, interactive, and compositional features manifested by emojis co-occurring with text. We have found that these emojis on Weibo appear most frequently at the end of the posts and reflect some unique Chinese cultural and linguistic features. Based on recurring pragmatic and functional patterns of text-emoji co-occurrences, it is proposed that emojis are used to perform speech acts, highlight subjective interpretations, and enhance informality, while substituting, reinforcing, and complementing the meanings conveyed by verbal language.

scholarly journals Swearwords reinterpreted

Pragmatics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-404
Author(s):  
Bin Li ◽  
Yan Dou ◽  
Yingting Cui ◽  
Yuqi Sheng
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Web Content ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Social Network Site ◽  
Network Site ◽  
Chinese Social Media ◽  
Internet And Social Media

Abstract Swearwords are common on the Internet nowadays. In addition to traditional forms and functions, new features and uses have been created as disguises and hedges, or even as deviants from insults. Focusing on the ‘new swearwords’ prevalent in Chinese social media, we identified the most commonly used novel swearwords developed and favoured by the young Chinese netizens, and analysed their linguistic features and uses on a Chinese social network site. We discovered that certain swearwords have undergone linguistic transformation to take up new grammatical and pragmatic functions. The invention and prevalence of these new swearwords raise interesting points on the roles played by the Internet and social media in bringing netizens together and in enabling them to create web content in their speech community.

scholarly journals Social Media and Fake News in Nigeria: A Speech Act Analysis of WhatsApp Messages on Coronavirus

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-66
Author(s):  
Godwin Ayigbo Owojecho Godwin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
World Health ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Space ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Speech Act Analysis

The evolution of social media has opened a new vista in digital communication across the world, Nigeria inclusive. Since the confirmation of the index case of Coronavirus in Nigeria, a lot of news on the subject which are largely considered by the World Health Organization to be false, had gone viral on the social media space. This study essentially examines some of those messages on WhatsApp that were circulated across Nigeria.  Five WhatsApp messages collected between March – June, 2020 were analysed using the framework of Austin’s Speech Acts with insights from the Conversational Maxims of Grice’s Cooperative Principles. The main objective of this analysis is to unravel the communicative effects of language. Findings show that the writers of those WhatsApp messages carefully manipulate some linguistic features to make such messages perform some illocutionary acts as well as trigger some perlocutionary moves in the minds of the readers. This buttresses the fact that language is used to achieve both linguistic and non linguistic aims.

More than playfulness

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiqiong Zhang ◽  
Min Wang ◽  
Ying Li
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Open Forum ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Qualitative Analyses ◽  
Chinese Social Media

Abstract This study aims to uncover the complexity of emoji usage on Chinese social media. We investigate emoji usage in comments on push notifications from the WeChat official account of Guokr, which was chosen as a representative for an open forum for public communication. The data includes 2552 comments from 90 articles pushed by the account. The analysis adopts a discourse-pragmatic perspective within the framework of intercultural pragmatics (Kecskes 2014), taking into account both the local discourse environment and the cultural context. It is found that Chinese WeChat users show a preference for using emojis that are unique to the WeChat platform. Qualitative analyses were carried out on selected WeChat emojis used in comments fulfilling the speech acts of self-disclosure, self-praise, humor and complaining. Emojis are found to be used to perform and reinforce a sense of playfulness in social media, but underlying this playfulness there is a discursive conformity to social norms in real life. The use of emojis resolves the tension between the openness and freedom in social media and the conservative, constraint-bounded nature of established social norms.

scholarly journals MEANING-MAKING OF INTERNET MEMES TO CREATE HUMOROUS SENSE: FUNCTIONS AS SPEECH ACTS

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 465-479
Author(s):  
Fatma Rahayu Nita ◽  
Slamet Setiawan ◽  
Lies Amin Lestari
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Multimodal Analysis ◽  
Illocutionary Acts ◽  
Semiotic Resources ◽  
And Function

This research explored how the memes were created with multimodal elements that could make meaning to create a humorous sense and function as speech acts. With the complexity of meaning-making, nowadays, it had become a trend that people could communicate online through Memes. Semiotics provides how the combination of modes, media, and potential meanings, that were applied to make meaning in memes. At the same time, pragmatics proposes details on how memes can function as speech acts. This research adopted a qualitative method using multimodal analysis by Leeuwen (2005) and speech acts theory by Bach and Harnish (1980) that were employed as the theoretical framework. A total of 16 memes were retrieved and captured as JPG files from social media and other internet websites; therefore, documentation was the only technique used in this research. The results of the study showed that (1) the integration of semiotic resources such as mode, media, and meaning potentials in memes aided the readers to understand the background knowledge of memes (2) two types of communicative illocutionary acts were found in the memes: constative and directive illocutionary acts which function to express the emotion or opinions and question something (3) the effects of using internet memes could be seen through verbal and non-verbal perlocutionary acts which showed an agreement and had the same feeling as in the memes. Finally, the memes containing multimodal components composed of semiotic resources interacted creatively to make humorous sense, and it could aid the readers to communicate online. 

Audience engagement with news on Chinese social media: A discourse analysis of the People’s Daily official account on WeChat

2021 ◽  
pp. 175048132110265
Author(s):  
Geqi Wu ◽  
Chunlei Pan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
News Story ◽  
News Values ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
News Reports ◽  
People’S Daily ◽  
People's Daily ◽  
Chinese Social Media

Delivering news on social media platforms is an increasingly important consideration in journalism practice. However, little attention has been paid to audience engagement with news on social media, especially the discursive presentation of news on the Chinese social media platform WeChat. Based on 36 news reports collected from the People’s Daily official account, this study analyses how news discourse is constructed and presented to engage audiences. The results suggest that highlighting proximity, personalisation, positivity and human interest in news values are the strategies adopted by journalists to engage audiences. The headline tends to use forward-referring terms and performs the speech acts of assertives and expressives to construct news values of proximity and positivity. The news story makes use of particular addressing terms, reported speeches and evaluative markers to construct news values of personalisation, positivity and human interest. The study enriches the analysis of journalistic practice of news on social media in the Chinese context.

Chinese Social Media Platforms and Microblogging in the Context of Public Diplomacy

Communicology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-179
Author(s):  
E.S. Nadezhkina
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Interactive Communication ◽  
Network Interaction ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Right ◽  
Chinese Social Media

The term “digital public diplomacy” that appeared in the 21st century owes much to the emergence and development of the concept of Web 2.0 (interactive communication on the Internet). The principle of network interaction, in which the system becomes better with an increase in the number of users and the creation of user-generated content, made it possible to create social media platforms where news and entertainment content is created and moderated by the user. Such platforms have become an expression of the opinions of various groups of people in many countries of the world, including China. The Chinese segment of the Internet is “closed”, and many popular Western services are blocked in it. Studying the structure of Chinese social media platforms and microblogging, as well as analyzing targeted content is necessary to understand China’s public opinion, choose the right message channels and receive feedback for promoting the country’s public diplomacy. This paper reveals the main Chinese social media platforms and microblogging and provides the assessment of their popularity, as well as possibility of analyzing China’s public opinion based on “listening” to social media platforms and microblogging.

scholarly journals Uncovering the low-profile #MeToo movement: Towards a discursive politics of empowerment on Chinese social media

2021 ◽  
pp. 205943642110314
Author(s):  
Xiao Han
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Chinese Context ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Low Profile ◽  
Potential Possibility ◽  
Collective Reading ◽  
Discursive Politics ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Chinese Social Media

In China, a few posts related to #MeToo movement survived and remained online well after its peak and the state’s response in July 2018. This article proposes a theoretical framework that pays attention to discursive meaning-making and employs a broad notion of empowerment, referred to as ‘empowerment through discourse’, in order to offer a more nuanced understanding of the low-profile #MeToo movement in the Chinese context. This framework is used to analyse a corpus of uncensored #MeToo material, which appeared on Chinese social media. This article combines a discourse analysis of these posts and interviews with feminists from activist collectives to critically examine feminist empowerment by reflecting on survivor/victim narration and storytelling practices, digital media’s capacity to facilitate critical dialogue between witnesses and survivors/victims and activist collectives’ organising role in opening up a dialogic space for collective reading, listening and healing. These reflections lead to broader considerations on how notions of empowerment can spur collective action and structural change. In short, this article demonstrates the potential possibility of discursive change and reflects on this mode of feminist politics as a way to speak to empowerment in the Chinese context.

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