Descriptive Analysis of Emoticons/Emoji and Persuasive Digital Language Use in WhatsApp Messages

Abstract

WhatsApp messaging has emerged as one of the major ways that people mostly use for communication purposes in conjunction with fast changes in Internet and computer technologies. Linguistic structures with emoticons/emoji enrich the quality of communication in the environment, which has created a digital language. One of the significant purposes of using such a digital language is obviously to persuade the receiver and send feedback to the sender of the message. On the one hand, persuasive communication is almost indispensable for people who use WhatsApp. On the other hand, persuasion is a real and intentional cognitive process based on preferring certain linguistic style, decision making and providing motivational feedback. In this regard, this work aims at clarifying and exploring persuasive messages with emoticons/emoji based on digital language styles with non-standard writing. The study particularly investigates persuasive digital language used in the WhatsApp messages in terms of the following aspects: 1) languages which are used by the participants in social media platforms, 2) purposes of the participants in using social media platforms, 3) choices of persuasive language by the participants in social media platforms, 4) words that the participants initiate to start persuasive conversations in WhatsApp messages and 5) types of sentences the participants mostly produce in WhatsApp messages. It has been observed that Wh-adverbs (WRB) and Wh-pronouns (WP) are often used in initiation of persuasive language patterns. Female participants more frequently choose emoticons, photos, abbreviations, question/question marks, fiend’s names and pictures of the events than male participants do. The participants mostly preferred to use interrogatives during production of persuasive language patterns in WhatsApp messages.