





































Education, Language and Sociology Research 

ISSN 2690-3644 (Print) ISSN 2690-3652 (Online) 

Vol. 5, No. 2, 2024 

www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr 

68 
 

Original Paper 

Pragmatic Functions of Emoticons in WeChat Messaging  

Jianing Tang1 

1 School of English Studies, Xi’an International Studies University, Xi’an, China 

 

Received: April 1, 2024          Accepted: April 24, 2024      Online Published: May 10, 2024 

doi:10.22158/elsr.v5n2p68          URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elsr.v5n2p68 

 

Abstract 

With the development of social media and the updating of emoticons, people widely use emoticons to 

convey information and express emotions in instant messaging to achieve the purpose of communication. 

As a new research field, emoticons have attracted extensive attention of scholars in recent years. The 

previous studies mostly focus on motivation and influencing factors of emoticon usage from the 

perspective of communication. However, little research has been done on the study of linguistics. The 

author of this paper intends to explore the roles and pragmatic functions of emoticons in WeChat 

messaging through discourse analysis based on speech act theory. The study shows that emoticons 

compensate for the lack of information and eliminate ambiguity in online communication, and that 

different age groups have different understandings of emoticons. Hopefully the study on emoticons will 

help people systematically understand the roles and functions of emoticons, thus achieving interpersonal 

effective communication.  

Keywords 

Emoticons, speech act theory, pragmatic functions 

 

1. Introduction 

With the progress and popularity of technology, the way people communicate has changed dramatically. 

Network communication occupies an increasing proportion in people-to-people exchange because it 

breaks down the boundaries of time and space. However, the original computer-mediated communication 

(CMC) mainly carries out information based on textual messages and lacks of nonverbal cues, which 

leads to users’ incomplete interpretation and misunderstanding.  

Therefore, emoticons are designed and updated in various communication channels to remedy those 

communication gaps. Due to the popularity of using emoticons in online communication, there have been 

a number of empirical attempts to investigate the use of emoticons.  

Some scholars take a fresh look at individual differences in the use of emoticons (Baron, 2004, p. 418; 

Huffaker & Calvert, 2005, 1083; Liu X. T. et al. 11). Aside from demographic factors, different contexts 



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and motives also affect the use of emoticons. Faced with different objects and context, people adjust their 

strategies of using emoticons to meet different communication needs (Liu L. Q., 2020, p. 93). Based on 

the relevant research on emoticons, the motivation of using emoticons can be classified into four 

categories: transmitting information, adjusting communication atmosphere, entertainment, and efficiency 

(p. 89). 

The current researches mainly focus on the functions of emoticons. Nonverbal behaviors in face-to-face 

communication achieve three functions: providing information, regulating social interaction, and 

establishing affection and intimacy (Ekman & Friesen, 2009, p. 89). Some scholars draw parallels 

between emoticons and other signs and conclude that emoticons serve the same functions as actual 

nonverbal behaviors, including strengthening the intensity of message, disambiguating the content, and 

regulating the interaction (Provine et al., 2007, p. 299; Derks et al., 2008, p. 381). On the one hand, 

emoticons are considered as “emotion-marks” to indicate people’s emotional state (Baron, 2004, p. 242; 

Rezabek & Cochenour, 1998, p. 201). On the other hand, emoticons are used to indicate illocutionary 

forces, containing intentions and motivations of the sender (Dresner & Herring, 2010, p. 250; Riordan et 

al., 2010, p. 1817).  

However, few studies have been done on pragmatics, and most of them only focus on the pragmatic 

functions of emoticons with inadequate explanations. Dresner and Herring stress that the primary 

function of emoticons is not to make up for the missing content as “emotional markers”, but to convey 

“pragmatic meaning” (p. 250). Song puts forward that text annotation and visual efficiency of emoticons 

have a positive impact on users’ perceived pleasure based on speech act theory (p. 126). Furthermore, Yu 

and Qin explore emoticons from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics and point out that the process 

of interpreting emoticons is the process of encoding and decoding language (p. 135). Similarly, Li and 

Jiang analyze the pragmatic meanings of the “face with tears of joy” in five online dialogues and explain 

the cognitive mechanism behind these pragmatic meanings (p. 68). 

Moreover, it is still unknown that whether the selected emoticon can be used to perform all types of 

illocutionary in Searle’s classification or just some types in order to achieve effective communication. 

Therefore, this paper aims to explore the roles and pragmatic functions of two typical emoticons, smiling 

face and frowning face, in WeChat messaging through discourse analysis based on speech act theory. The 

following two questions will be solved: 

1). What are the roles of emoticons in WeChat messaging? 

2). What are the pragmatic functions of emoticons in WeChat messaging? 

 

2. Method 

There are 200 respondents randomly sampled from WeChat users, including 88 male and 112 female 

(See Table 1).  

 

 



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Table 1. Background Information of the Participants 

Variable Detailed Information Number Percentage 

Gender Male  88 44 % 

 Female 112 56% 

Age 15-30 years old 169 84.5 % 

 31-60 years old 30 15% 

 Over 60 years old 1 0.5% 

Education Level Senior high school and below 70 35 % 

 Undergraduate degree 121 60.5% 

 Postgraduate or doctor 9 4.5% 

Frequency of using 

emoticons 

Never 8 4% 

Seldom 11 5.5% 

 Sometimes 39 19.5% 

 Often 103 51.5% 

 Always 39 19.5% 

 

Eligible subjects are between the age of 15 and 60 years old. The study mainly focuses on two age groups 

including respondents aged from 15 to 30 years old and 31 to 60 years old. In the study, most of the 

respondents (60.5%) have earned an undergraduate degree. The vast majority of the respondents (96%) 

use emoticons in WeChat messaging, and more than half of them often use emoticons out of various 

motives. Therefore, it is worthwhile to research emoticons. 

This study has used a combination of qualitative and quantitative approach. The qualitative research 

collected data from semi-structured interviews based on the functions of emoticons proposed by Rashdi 

(2018, p.126). Considering that the majority of Chinese users of WeChat emoticons are post-90s, this 

study selected three post-90s as the interviewees with the minimum age of 20 and the maximum age of 

26, and the interview time from 20 to 30 minutes per person. The interview questions are divided into 

three parts: sociodemographic information, roles and functions of emoticons based on the preset themes, 

and selections of emoticons with different conversation objects in different situations (See Table 2). This 

interview provides specific online conversation scenarios and collects interviewees’ daily conversations 

in order to explore whether emoticons can achieve people’s communicative purposes.  

The questionnaire has been designed based on the roles and functions of emoticons extracted from the 

qualitative research. The questionnaire is distributed by snowball sampling on the Internet. A total of 205 

questionnaires are collected and 200 are valid. There are four sections in the questionnaire (See Table 3).  

 

 

 



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Table 2. The Functions of Emoticons Obtained from Interviews 

Preset Theme Typical Description in the Interview 

strengthen message content 

 

“I think emoticons can show my tone and mood, and make 

others understand me better”; “I hope that the other party can 

perceive my mood in WeChat Messaging, and emoticons help 

me a lot in this way.” 

soften the impact of negative words 

 

“When my text contains demanding words, I often add a smiling 

face at the end of the text to soften my tone.” 

enrich emotional expression 

 

“Pure text is too monotonous to express my feelings well”; “If 

the other party cannot perceive my emotion, he may misinterpret 

my meaning. To some extent, emoticons can make my emotion 

more intuitive.” 

Compensate for the context  

 

“I think emoticons are equivalent to pure text to a certain extent, 

because they provide another layer of meaning and enrich the 

context. We can interpret the text more accurately.” 

open or close a conversation “I do not know what to send when chatting with unfamiliar 

people at the beginning, so I often send a cute emoticon to break 

the awkward atmosphere and open our topic.” 

indicate the completion of 

statement 

“Sometimes I will add an emoticon at the end of the sentence, 

not only to express my feelings, but also to indicate the end of 

my sentence, which is similar to the role of punctuation.” 

Improve communication 

effectiveness 

“I think sometimes the other party cannot understand what I 

really want to express, but emoticons can help me solve this 

problem”; “Sometimes I can communicate with my close 

friends with only a few emoticons, which greatly improves the 

efficiency of online communication.” 

 

Table 3. Structure of the Questionnaire 

Section Question 

Sociodemographic information Q1 (Gender) 

Q2 (Age) 

Q3 (Educational background) 

Usage  Q4 (Use of emoticons)  

Q5 (Frequency of sending emoticons) 

Q6 (Usage scenarios) 

Roles and Functions Q7-Q10 (roles) 



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Q11-Q14 (roles and functions) 

Communicative effectiveness Q15 (Communicative goal) 

 

The first section is about sociodemographic information of respondents; the second section pays attention 

to respondents’ use of WeChat emoticons; the third section provides WeChat messages with smiling or 

frowning face in different scenarios for respondents to choose the most appropriate roles or functions; 

the fourth section evaluates the communicative effectiveness of emoticons in WeChat messaging.  

The procedures of data analysis can be divided into five steps. Firstly, transcribe the audio recordings 

and translate them into English. Secondly, extract interviewees’ descriptions of the roles and functions 

of emoticons. Thirdly, annotate emoticons by Searle’s taxonomy and select typical examples to examine. 

Fourthly, analyze pragmatic functions of emoticons through discourse analysis based on speech act theory. 

Finally, counts different social groups’ understanding of the roles and functions of emoticons, providing 

strong data support for discourse interpretation. 

 

3. Discussion 

3.1 Roles of Emotions in WeChat Message 

3.1.1 Emotional Markers 

The term “emoticon” is a blend of “emotion” and “icon”. Its prototype is a facial expression icon, which 

stimulates and simplifies human facial expression. In the questionnaire, almost 90% percent of 

respondents put forward that the emoticons enable the receivers to perceive their emotions more directly 

and strongly during a conversation. Such as the following message in WeChat. 

A: I am going to Hangzhou this winter holiday! 

B: Great have a nice day! 

Actually, the word “great” has accurately expressed the feeling that B is satisfied with A’s plan. 

Meanwhile, B added smiling face that is consistent with the meaning of the word “great” after the 

utterance, which enhanced the degree of his happiness. Respondents believe that the use of smiling face 

avoids monotony caused by pure text. From another point of view, smiling face “punctuates” speech. In 

this situation, the emoticon occurs during pauses, and its function is equivalent to exclamation mark after 

statements or laughter in face-to-face communication. It is worth noting that in the collected WeChat 

messages, as long as emoticons are added between the phrase boundaries, almost all punctuation marks 

in this position will be omitted. It is concluded that emoticons can replace punctuation marks in online 

communication to some extent. 

Additionally, most of respondents believe that the negative message with frowning face spreads more 

negative emotions than the pure negative one. However, mixed messages are more ambiguous than pure 

message. Such as the following message: 

A: Senior, I am going to choose courses online. Can you recommend some to me? 



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B: Second Language Acquisition is interesting, so you can choose it. I wish you were like it  

The word “interesting” is positive, while the frowning face conveys negativity. It is a mixed message—

a positive message coupled with a negative emoticon. 32.5% of respondents believe that the message is 

neutral because the positive message and the negative emoticon can cancel each other out. It implies that 

you can choose this course but it is probably not very interesting. 33.5% of them present that the senior 

is not recommend for this course. The message is overall negative, which shows that the meaning 

conveyed by the emoticon is more important than the one conveyed by text. The rest of them point out 

that the message is positive, which means that this course is interesting, and the negative emoticon is just 

to establish a humorous atmosphere. Different receivers interpret mixed messages with their own 

experiences and imagination. If they want to obtain accurate information, they need to confirm with the 

sender. To a certain extent, mixed messages will affect receivers’ judgment, and is not conducive to the 

rapid and accurate transmission of information, but there is no denying that the sender intentionally did 

it to create a special effect. Moreover, the concrete meaning of emoticon is related to the context. When 

used in this way, emoticons are no longer independent of the text, but become a part of the text.  

3.1.2 Indicators of Ilocutionary Acts 

The illocutionary point of expressives is to express the affective state specified in the utterance. The 

sender expresses his feelings about an affairs, such as greeting and apologies. As mentioned in the 

previous section, emoticon is a graphic symbol used to express emotions and attitudes. It seems that 

adding emoticons after expressives is redundant from the perspective of syntactic structure. However, 

the statistics shows that even if the meaning emoticons conveyed is consistent with the illocutionary force 

in discourse, they enrich emotional expression as an additional information.  

Representatives are those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to the truth of what has 

been said, such as statement and description. From the data received, most online conversations start with 

a statement, which is either objective or subjective, and whether to add emoticons is based on the 

relationship with the receiver or the context. The subjective statement always contains the sender’s 

emotions. This kind of statements is a basis for the sender to express his emotions or attitudes, which is 

classified as expressives. The sentence in the questionnaire “I am going to work” is an objective statement. 

When used without context, some respondents add frowning face after the statement, while some of them 

add smiling face. It indicates that respondents have different interpretations of this utterance, but it is 

undeniable that the completion of representatives does not depend on the use of a specific emoticon. 

Although emoticons can be regarded as a medium to show the power of discourse, it does not affect the 

identity of representatives. In addition, when sending to intimate friends or easing the awkward 

atmosphere, respondents usually add emoticons, and the types of emoticons depend on their attitudes 

towards the event, suggesting their emotional state. While they omit emoticons when having formal 

conversations.  

Commissives are those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of 

action, such as promising, undertaking and vowing. Such as the following message: 



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A: Tomorrow is the School Open Day, I would like to invite you to visit my school! 

B: I cannot come to visit your school because I have an interview tomorrow. I promise I will come next 

time. Have a nice day  

B rejected A’s invitation with a clear mark “cannot”. A rejection is a face-threating act in face-to-face 

communication. However, the receiver explained why he could not go and made a commitment. It shows 

that the refusal was not his intention. He wanted to participate in the activity but had to give up because 

of the interview, which mitigates the degree of rejection. Meanwhile, the smiling face here presents a 

positive image to soften the rejection. Most respondents believe that the emoticon is in tandem with 

commissives to mitigate face-threatening act and maintain good interpersonal relationships between both 

sides. From another perspective, the smiling face is a wry smile. In this situation, the smiling face 

contains feelings of helplessness and regret, which deviates from the original meaning of the emoticon. 

However, in either case, the degree of face threat is higher for unexplained rejection than for explained 

rejection, and the lowest level of face-threatening act is the refusal with explanation and positive 

emoticon.  

Directives cover acts in which the words are aimed at making the hearer do something, such as requests 

and commands. According to data collected, few people give orders directly and stiffly, even 

conversations between different age groups follow this rule. Most of respondents believe that the 

directive tone in the formal notice is the strongest, but it is often eased by the word “please” added by 

the informer. In some informal notices, the sender often adds emoticon at the end. The following is an 

online communication between a university student and his thesis instructor: 

Instructor: Please complete the first draft of your thesis before the start of this school year  

Student: I will try my best to finish it  

The teacher’s utterance implies the intention of urging the student to finish his thesis with an apparent 

indicative tone. However, the word “please” and the smiling face complement each other to soften the 

illocutionary force of the request. Most respondents believe that the smiling face is equivalent to the word 

“please”. It indicates that even the word “please” is omitted, the illocutionary force will not upgrade. The 

emoticon serves to modify the propositional content of the utterance and functions as a softening hedge 

to downgrade the authoritative position of the leader. 

3.2 Pragmatic Functions of Emoticons in WeChat Messaging 

3.2.1 Context Compensation 

Context refers to any features of the dynamic setting or environment in which a linguistic unit is 

systematically used. It is generally considered as constituted knowledge shared by the speaker and the 

hearer, such as cultural background, situation, etc. Context can be divided into two categories: linguistic 

context and situational context (Hu, 2017, p. 166). Linguistic context refers to the surrounding utterance 

in the same discourse, while situational context is the situation where communication occurs. The same 

word expresses different meanings in different contexts, which affects people’s understanding. Context 



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plays a supplementary role in language comprehension, especially in the understanding of implicate 

meaning and illocutionary meaning.  

In the process of online communication, senders and receivers are in different contexts; therefore, some 

contextual meanings will be lost or ignored, especially nonverbal signs. As mentioned above, emoticons 

can mimic people’s facial expressions so that they can compensate for contextual information missing 

from pure text. It can also enable the sender to express his intentions more appropriately, or even express 

the most delicate and subtle emotions that are difficult for the sender to describe in pure text for 

unexpected communication effects. Such as the following text: 

A: Did you see the new movie yesterday   

B: No, I was writing my paper  

A: Oh, I am sorry to remind you of the“misery time”. But if you have time later, you can go and have a 

look. It is really interesting！ 

B: Ok! I will watch it tonight  

The first sentence with smiling face creates a warm and pleasant atmosphere, which lets B know that A 

was not forcing him to watch this movie but recommended it, thus making up for the missing context of 

the pure text. After that, B promised that he would see the movie tonight with a smiling face. The whole 

atmosphere was harmonious, and the best communication effect between the sender and the receiver was 

achieved. 

3.2.2 Identity Construction  

Kroskrity proposes that social identity refers to the linguistic construction of membership in one or more 

social groups or categories (2000, p. 111). Moreover, identity is fluid, which means that people have 

multiple and multi-level identities. These identities may change or even conflict with each other. Identity 

construction and language are inseparable. In the process of communication, people are actively building 

their own image while transmitting information (p. 120). They use language to demonstrate their different 

social identities. Context also affects identity construction. In a specific context, sender must choose his 

identity according to his motives, and the choice of identity will be reflected by communication, which 

finally affects communication effect.  

Instructor: Please complete the first draft of your thesis before the start of this school year  

Student: I will try my best to finish it  

In the context, the instructor added smiling face after the directive utterance, which constructs a kind 

teacher identity. The smiling face used by the student has two explanations. Most college students believe 

that this emoticon expresses negative feeling, which suggests that the student does not want to write 

thesis during the winter holiday. Other students propose that even if the student is not willing to write 

thesis, he uses the smiling face in order to build his own diligent and progressive identity and to construct 

harmonious relationship with the teacher. In this context, smiling face embodies positivity. While some 

respondents argue that the smiling face express happiness, especially people in middle-aged group, which 

represents that the student is willing to receive and finish this mission. 



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3.2.3 Contradiction Easing  

Emoticons have carried out an imitation of a complete set of human facial expressions. They narrow the 

psychological distance between people and improve intelligibility of discourse to a certain extent. In 

some cases, pure text inevitably gives people a stiff feeling in online communication, which is easy to 

generate misunderstanding thus causing conflicts, especially among people of different generations in 

the context of rejection. Such as the following message: 

Son: Father, can I go to amusement park with my friends after school? 

Father: No, it is too late, so you must go home on time. 

Son: Every time you refuse my request ruthlessly, I will not listen to you this time. 

In this context, the father just used a few words to refuse the son’s request. Although this rejection with 

an explanation, the tone of the whole utterance seemed very stiff. The utterance implied the mandatory 

restriction of the elders on the behaviors of the younger, which made his son unhappy. However, if 

smiling face or other positive emoticons are added to the father’s text, the outcome will be different. 

Positive emoticons can be used to express that the father did not blame or restrict the child, but was 

worried about his safety, which eased the tension and reduced face-threatening act. 

3.2.4 Illocutionary Force Effect  

The author has discussed the roles of emoticons as indicators of illocutionary acts. As mentioned above, 

emoticons are not just used to express emotions. They play a significant role in constructing context and 

guiding the senders’ choice of identity. The specific meaning of information is related to the context. 

Regardless of the illocutionary acts, emoticons participate in the process of doing things with words as a 

non-verbal component to strengthen or mitigate the force for effective online communication. In general, 

as indicators of expressives, emoticons enrich emotional expression and serve as additional information 

to enhance people’s emotions and attitudes; as indicators of representatives, emoticons strengthen the 

illocutionary force of representatives; as indicators of commissives and directives, emoticons mitigate 

face-threating act and serve to soften the illocutionary force of the rejection or request. 

 

4. Conclusion 

This study shows that emoticons are not only emotional markers but also indicators of illocutionary acts 

based on speech act theory. Emoticons act as nonverbal behavior in the process of online communication 

to strengthen or mitigate illocutionary forces for effective online communication. Additionally, although 

emoticons can be used as a medium for demonstrating the power of discourse, they cannot affect the 

identity of illocutionary acts, but only serve to strengthen or soften these acts. 

According to discourse analysis, there are four pragmatic functions of emoticons, compensating context, 

construction identity, easing contradiction and generating illocutionary force effect. In general, emoticons 

play an important role in compensating for the lack of information, eliminating ambiguity in online 

communication, and strengthening or mitigating illocutionary force. Moreover, different age groups have 



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different understandings of emoticons. Young people tend to use emoticons to express feelings while 

adults prefer to apply emoticons to shape a positive image. 

However, this study has some limitations. First, the sample of participants are all Chinese users, so it is 

impossible to generalize the results to all WeChat users around the world. Second, the research subject 

is the population aged from 15 to 60, which does not include the group aged over 60. The influence of 

the functions of emoticons on age can be further explored in the future research. Finally, this paper only 

focuses on two typical WeChat emoticons, smiling and frowning face; therefore, it is uncertain whether 

there is age differences for other WeChat emoticons. 

 

Acknowledgement 

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. 

 

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