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Emoji as resources for negotiating affiliation and taste in TikTok comments

 | University of New South Wales
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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 UNSW Sydney.

Published online: 9 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00144.zap
Abstract
This paper examines how emoji operate as pragmatic resources for negotiating affiliation in TikTok comment threads. Adopting a social semiotic perspective and the emoji–text convergence model (Zappavigna, Michele, and Lorenzo Logi. 2024a. Emoji and Social Media Paralanguage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), the study analyses how emoji interact with their co-text to frame stance, modulate affect, and index shared or contested values. Combining concordance-based and interactional analyses, we show how emoji guide interpretation and shape alignment in participatory comment cultures. Emoji such as the Skull 💀 and Face With Rolling Eyes 🙄 are used to intensify mockery and disalignment, while Hot Beverage ☕ and Red Heart ❤ foster conviviality and in-group solidarity. These findings highlight that emoji meanings are inherently contextual and multimodal, emerging through their coordination with linguistic resources. By foregrounding pragmatic functions such as irony, mock politeness, and affective intensification, the study demonstrates how emoji not only manage alignment but also enact classed orientations to taste and civility. These are socially stratified preferences and norms in digital discourse around what counts as legitimate or refined behaviour regarding, for example, social practices such as coffee consumption. In doing so, the study extends prior typologies of emoji function (e.g., Herring, Susan C., Ashley R. Dainas, and Ying Tang. 2021. “‘MEOW! Okay, I shouldn’t have done that’: Factors influencing vocal performance through Animoji.” In Workshop Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. [URL] (accessed 4 November 2025).) and models of emoji–text relations (Zappavigna, Michele, and Lorenzo Logi. 2024a. Emoji and Social Media Paralanguage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) by showing how emoji perform ideological work in participatory discourse about everyday commodities.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Dataset
    • 2.2Method of analysis
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Introduction
    • 3.2Emoji frequency
  • 4.Emoji and the policing of taste
  • 5.Negotiating social relations in extended threads
  • 6.Emoji and affiliation across the dataset
  • 7.Hot Beverage emoji: Affirming taste and affiliation
  • 8.Conclusion
  • References
References (27)
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