Relevance theory perspective of emojis used by Chinese younger and older adults in WeChat

Computer-mediated communication is so popular in social interaction that Cyberpragmatics has been formulated to study emojis from the perspective of Relevance Theory. According to Relevance Theory, individuals tend to select information that provides the most significant cognitive benefits while requiring the least processing effort during comprehension. Emojis, as concise and efficient communication stimuli, can demonstrate how interlocutors of different ages adjust their processing effort in response to contextual effects. However, most previous studies focused on specific English emojis in a particular age group. Little attention has been paid to the rules governing emoji usage for different age groups in the Chinese context. We contend that a productive way to examine emoji usage is by considering the different cognitive processes involved in different usages, specifically using Yus’s relevance-theoretic model, Cyberpragmatics. We proposed five pragmatic functions of emojis (i.e., filling, enhancing, weakening, challenging, and substituting) and believed these five functions could cost different processing efforts and produce different contextual effects. The “filling” function involves adding emotional expression to otherwise neutral or emotionless text, while the “enhancing” function refers to amplifying the emotional expression in a text that already conveys an emotional tone. The “substituting” function works when emojis replace verbal elements to assist in conversational management, such as turn-taking and backchannel cues. The “challenging” function involves emojis contradicting the explicit content of utterances, while the “weakening” function pertains to mitigating the illocutionary force of a speech act. Furthermore, employing a mixed method, this study investigated how younger and older individuals on WeChat used these five emoji functions. The results demonstrated that the younger and older groups exhibited variations in how they chose emojis to achieve relevance. The older adults preferred to conserve efforts, whereas the younger individuals sought to maximize contextual effects with less concern for efforts.