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Article published In: Internet Pragmatics
Vol. 7:2 (2024) ► pp.249–271

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Flirting and winking in Tinder chats

Emoji, ambiguity, and sequential actions

 | University College London
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University College London.

Published online: 15 February 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00107.gib
Abstract
Existing research across the diverse field(s) of ‘discourse studies’ has started to explore the communicative orders and sequential practices surrounding emoji use (Skovholt, Karianne, Anette Grønning, and Anne Kankaanranta. 2014. “The communicative functions of emoticons in workplace e-mails: :-).” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19(4): 780–797. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Herring, Susan C., and Ashley Dainas. 2017. “‘Nice picture comment!’: Graphicons in Facebook comment threads.” In Proceedings of the Fiftieth Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-50), 2185–2194. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Gibson, Will, Pingping Huang, and Qianyun Yu. 2018. “Emoji and communicative action: The semiotics, sequence and gestural actions of ‘face covering hand’.” Discourse, Context & Media 261: 91–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . 2019. “Emoji and rapport management in Spanish WhatsApp chats.” Journal of Pragmatics 1431: 109–120. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). However, researchers have not yet systematically analysed one of the demonstrable phenomena of emoji, which is their ambiguity as meaning-making devices (Miller, Hannah, Jacob Thebault-Spieker, Shuo Chang, Isaac Johnson, Loren Terveen, and Brent Hecht. 2016. “‘Blissfully happy’ or ‘ready to fight’: Varying interpretations of emoji.” Proceedings of the Tenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2016): 259–268.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Jaeger, Sara R., Yixun Xia, Pui-Yee Lee, Denise C. Hunter, Michelle K. Beresford, and Gastón Ares. 2017. “Emoji questionnaires can be used with a range of population segments: Findings relating to age, gender and frequency of emoji/emoticon use.” Food Quality and Preference 681: 397–410. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). This study draws on Conversation Analysis to explore the issue of ambiguity in the use of one particular type of emoji, the wink (e.g., 😉, 🥴, 😜). Drawing on a data corpus of text conversations in Danish and in Spanish by users of the dating app ‘Tinder’, the analysis explores the phenomena of ambiguity in relation to the practice of flirting. The paper highlights four possible sources of ambiguity: idiosyncratic use, semiotic references, sequential placement, and relationship to ambiguous textual actions. The paper ends with reflections on possible future areas of research in the study of emoji and communication.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Emoji and communicative action
    • 1.2Tinder
    • 1.3Flirting
  • 2.The study
    • 2.1Design of the study
    • 2.2Analytic process and framework
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Idiosyncrasy, repair and accountability
    • 3.2Ambiguity in ‘flirting’ and ‘winking’
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Ambiguity and emoji
    • 4.2Implications and further research
  • References
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Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Scharrer, Lena & Michelle Weckermann
2026. “You wanna flirt?” – “Let's flirt”: A corpus-based analysis of flirting. Journal of Pragmatics 251 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Andersen, Elisabeth Muth
2025. Flirting with categories. Journal of Language and Sexuality 14:2 ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo
Feng, Debing
2025. “Thank you for your participation”. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) DOI logo
García-Montes, Andrea
2025. Kisses and peaches. Internet Pragmatics 8:2 ► pp. 214 ff. DOI logo
Gershon, Ilana
2025. Seeking romance in a marketplace of profiles: a commentary. Discourse, Context & Media 68 ► pp. 100948 ff. DOI logo
Yus, Francisco
2025. Pragmatic Functions of Emojis. In Emoji Pragmatics, ► pp. 49 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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