Strategic communication studies

Strategic communication studies

Investigating the Speech Acts of Tweets Containing Emoji Based on Searl’s Theory

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Parvin Faghfouri Azar 1
Gholamreza Azari 2
1 PhD student, General Linguistics, Central Tehran Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Media Studies - Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Sciences, Tehran Azad University, Center, Tehran, Iran (Author).
10.22034/rcc.2022.254535
Abstract
The ever-increasing development of the Internet and the infrastructure of information and communication technology has caused the emergence of a new style of non-verbal communication in the form of "emoji," which, with a linguistic approach, can be considered a symbol of accessible communication in the virtual space. This research aimed to investigate the types of nonverbal acts based on Searle's theory in tweets containing emojis and their linguistic functions, which was done with the quantitative content analysis method. By selecting the top three hashtags in each social, economy, culture, and health field, 5000 tweets were selected as the statistical population. Among them, 1200 tweets were randomly selected from male and female users, and within a period of six months (March 2019 to September 2019) as a sample and coded using MAXQDA software, the share of each domain was 300 tweets. According to the results, among the 12 considered categories, expressive and declarative nonverbal acts had the highest and lowest frequency of repetition, respectively. Also, the emotional function of emoji had the highest, and the referential function of emoji had the lowest frequency of repetition.
Keywords
Nonverbal communication
Emoji
Tweet
Social networking
Nonverbal act
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Strategic communication studies
Volume 2, Issue 2 - Serial Number 4
Summer 2022
Pages 95-103

  • Receive Date 23 July 2022
  • Revise Date 20 August 2022
  • Accept Date 24 August 2022