A Pragmatic Analysis of Facial Emoji and Their Impact on Pakistani Millennial Facebook Communication.
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Date
2018
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University of Management and Technology
Abstract
This study investigates the pragmatics of five facial Emoji (Winky, Laughter, Teary, Surprise, and Horny) by taking real sample of Facebook exchanges by Pakistani Millennial. The aim of the study is to determine whether Facial Emoji are just emotive building blocks in the transmissions of Pakistani Millennial exchanges or these are surrogates or substitutes for new linguistic trends in Millennial Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). In pragmatic analysis, this study explores multiple functions of Facial Emoji; as relational and contextual in meaning making or regulating and disambiguating communication. In order to identify Emoji pragmatics in Millennial Facebook exchanges data of 20 participants from Pakistani Millennial Facebook Homepage-Wall posts in the form of exchanges and transmissions were scanned and scrutinized. The participants of the study were divided into two cohorts of Millennial. First 10 participants were individuals born during 1980-1990, while the second cohort consisted of participants born during 1991-2000. Males and Females from each group in equal number were included to check the gendered perspective of Facial Emoji. This data were analyzed qualitatively through content analysis by using the theoretical framework of ‘Semiotics' and ‘Pragmatics' with Kress and Van Leeuwen's (1996) Multimodality. Politeness strategies and Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) in ‘Pragmatics' and MacCloud's (1994) model in multimodality are used to check Emoji's hybrid nature in two medium i.e. image and text. This descriptive analysis revealed that Emoji are cultural and gender specific. Age group, education, profession and online ‘Millennial Identity' are the influencing factors in Pakistani Millennial choices for employing the selected five Facial Emoji. Millennial socialization and communication varies in accordance with the individual personality traits. Over all, the Emoji paradigm is not a paramount shift in Millennial E- communicative norms to be awarded the status of an independent linguistic repertoire in Pakistani Millennial Facebook Exchanges.
Description
supervisor: Dr. Nadia Anwar
Keywords
pragmatics of five facial Emoji, Pakistani Millennial, pragmatic analysis, Computer Mediated Communication.