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Article published In: Beyond Words: Pragmatic approaches to visual discourses in digital interactions
Edited by Agnese Sampietro and Carmen Pérez-Sabater
[Internet Pragmatics 8:2] 2025
► pp. 241–266

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Striking the balance between friendliness and professionality

Pragmatic uses and functions of emoji by Spanish MPs on Twitter/X bios

 | Complutense University of Madrid
Published online: 11 July 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00127.mai
Abstract
Research shows that emoji are not only used to express emotions but also to enhance the illocutionary force of messages or build social rapport (Pérez-Sabater, Carmen. 2019. “Emoticons in relational writing practices on WhatsApp: Some reflections on gender.” In Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions, ed. by Patricia Bou-Franch, and Patricia Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 163–189. Cham: Springer. 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; Alfano, Mark, Ritsaart Reimann, Ignacio Ojea Quintana, Marc Cheong, and Colin Klein. 2021. “The affiliative use of emoji and hashtags in the Black Lives Matter movement: A Twitter case study” [Preprint]. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The interaction between text content and emoji can influence perceptions of both the message and the sender (Butterworth, Sarah E., Traci A. Giuliano, Justin White, Lizette Cantu, and Kyle C. Fraser. 2019. “Sender gender influences emoji interpretation in text messages.” Frontiers in Psychology 101, 431196. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Hand, Christopher J., Kassandra Burd, Alex Oliver, and Christopher M. Robus. 2022. “Interactions between text content and emoji types determine perceptions of both messages and senders.” Computers in Human Behavior Reports 81, 100242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). However, in professional contexts, emoji may negatively impact perception of competence (Glikson, Ella, Arik Cheshin, and Gerben A. van Kleef. 2018. “The dark side of a smiley: Effects of smiling emoticons on virtual first impressions.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 9(5): 614–625. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). In the case of political figures, where their profile may intend to show a combination of friendliness and professionality, the use of emoji becomes particularly relevant. This paper examines the use of emoji in the Twitter/X
bios of 350 Spanish members of parliaments (2019–2023). Results reveal that male right-wing politicians use emoji more frequently, while left-wing usage is mainly by women. Both groups primarily use emoji to emphasize political messages and personal information, highlighting their role in shaping politicians’ online personas.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Subjects and political affiliation
    • 3.2Corpus description and methodological approach
    • 3.3Types and functions of emoji
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Types of emoji
    • 4.2Functions of emoji
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (66)
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Pérez-Sabater, Carmen
2025. “Emojis are grown-up stuff”. Internet Pragmatics 8:2 ► pp. 152 ff. DOI logo

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