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Part of
Approaches to Internet Pragmatics: Theory and practice
Edited by Chaoqun Xie, Francisco Yus and Hartmut Haberland
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 318] 2021
► pp. 287–320

Chapter 10
A study on how cultural and gender parameters affect emoticon distribution, usage and frequency in American and Japanese online discourse

| Tohoku University , Japan

This study attempts to understand how cultural and gender parameters affect emoticon distribution, usage and frequency in American and Japanese online discourse. From a corpus of American and Japanese personal blog comments of over 45,000 sentences and data from interviews with bloggers, emoticon function, usage and frequency were compared across gender and cross-culturally. In addition, an examination of how emoticons interact with the linguistic text and other unconventional means of communication such as unconventional phonetic spelling, was also given consideration.

Keywords: emoticons, gender, positive impact upgraders (PIU’s), negative impact downgraders (NID’s), Japanese, American, speech act markers, culture
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A review of the emoticon literature: Function, gender and cultural factors
  • 3.Data
    • 3.1Gender clarification
  • 4.Emoticons analyzed
  • 5.Methods of emoticon classification
    • 5.1Emoticons as propositional markers
      • Emoticons as iconic/emotion strengtheners
      • Emoticons that enhance verbal linguistic content
      • Emoticons as lexical replacements
    • 5.2Emoticons as politeness-affiliated speech act markers
      • Emoticons that act as PIU’s
      • Emoticons that act as negative impact downgraders (NID)
      • Supplementary UMC’s
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Japanese emoticon frequency
    • 6.2American emoticon frequency
    • 6.3Cross-cultural emoticon frequency
    • 6.4Functions: Emoticons as propositional markers
      • Japanese female examples (Emoticons as iconic/emotion strengtheners)
      • Japanese male examples (emoticons as iconic/emotional strengtheners)
      • American female examples (emoticons as iconic/emotion strengtheners)
      • American male example (emoticons as iconic/emotion strengtheners)
      • Japanese female example (emoticons as lexical replacements/enhancers of verbal linguistic content)
      • Japanese male example (emoticon as lexical replacement/enhancer of verbal linguistic content)
      • American female example (emoticon as lexical replacement/enhancer of verbal linguistic content)
      • American male examples (emoticons that enhance verbal linguistic content)
  • 7.Politeness-affiliated data
    • Politeness-affiliated data: Japanese female example (comments opening and solidarity markers)
    • Japanese male examples (comment openings and closings)
    • American male example (comments opening and closing)
    • Japanese male examples (markers of solidarity)
    • American female examples (markers of solidarity and compliments)
    • American male examples (solidarity markers and compliments)
    • Japanese female examples (expressing gratitude)
    • American female examples (expressing gratitude)
    • American male examples (expressing thanks)
  • 8.Interplay and relationship between emoticons and other UMC’s
  • 9.Discussion
  • 10.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.318.10kav
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