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Emoji functions in compliments on TikTok and DouYin

 | Wuhan UniversityWuhan | National Institute of Chinese Language Matters and Social DevelopmentWuhan
Published online: 11 September 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00131.xie
Abstract
While emojis have been widely studied in digital discourse, their role in specific speech acts like compliments remains understudied. This study examines 1,000 emoji-containing compliments from TikTok (English) and DouYin (Chinese), aiming to classify emoji pragmatic functions and usage patterns. A refined taxonomy is developed, including three higher-level functions, eleven sub-functions, four positional types, and four co-occurrence types. Findings reveal significant cross-linguistic and platform-based differences. The thumbs-up emoji (👍) is dominant in Chinese compliments, while the smiling face with hearts (🥰) leads in English. English users tend to use emojis to express emotions, whereas Chinese users more often use them to stylize the message or simulate gestures. Although emojis typically occur in sentence-final position, Chinese users show a higher degree of repetition compared to English users. This study offers a corpus-based, cross-linguistic analysis of emoji functions in compliments, proposing a refined functional taxonomy and revealing multimodal pragmatic patterns across platforms and languages.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Method
  • 4.The qualitative classification of emoji positions, co-occurrences, and pragmatic functions in compliments
  • 5.Quantitative distributions of emoji types, functions, positions and co-occurrences
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (63)
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