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Effects of gender and generation on Chinese self-praise on social media

 | Beihang University
 | Beihang University
ORCiD logo with link | Beihang University
Published online: 8 August 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.24025.guo
Abstract
Self-praise is an often-examined topic in pragmatics studies, but it has rarely been investigated from the point of view of variational pragmatics. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of gender and generation on Chinese self-praise on social media. A total of 400 self-praise posts were collected from Weibo, the Chinese version of X (formerly Twitter), from eighty participants (forty females and forty males). The analysis found that females praised their own appearance and possessions significantly more frequently than males, while males paid much more attention to competence than females. There were significant differences between the older and younger groups in terms of their use of the modified explicit self-praise strategy and the implicit self-praise strategy. In addition, there were significant differences between the two groups in relation to the topics of appearance, possessions, competence and virtue. The underlying social factors behind these similarities and differences are discussed.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Studies on online self-praise
    • 2.2Pragmatic studies on gender variation
    • 2.3Pragmatic studies on generation variation
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data collection
    • 3.2Data analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Gender variation in self-praise strategies and self-praise topics
      • 4.1.1Gender variation in self-praise strategies
      • 4.1.2Gender variation in self-praise topics
    • 4.2Generation variation in self-praise strategies and self-praise topics
      • 4.2.1Generation variation in self-praise strategies
      • 4.2.2Generation variation in self-praise topics
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Gender effects on self-praise
    • 5.2Generation effect on self-praise
    • 5.3Explicit vs. implicit self-praise
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
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