A Cross-cultural Study On The Use Of "QQ" Emoticons Between Chinese And Russian College Students In CMC

The lack of non-verbal behavior in CMC makes it difficult for information senders to express a certain kind of mood,show individual character,or display charisma.With the help of emoticons,online communication become more smoothly.This thesis,taking “QQ” emoticons as research object,tries to make a quantitative and qualitative analysis on “QQ” emotions used in group chatting.This study has collected the chatting record in a QQ group with 209 Chinese sophomore students and a Wechat group of 117 Russian-speaking students in their second year in China for 5months trying to figure out the characteristics in the usage of “QQ” emoticons and the functions and effects of “QQ” emoticons in group chatting and make a comparative analysis between the two groups.Besides,this article has also discussed a special linguistic phenomenon found in the group chatting—multimodal metaphors made by“QQ” emoticons and words.The result shows that in different contexts of Chinese and Russian,there are many similarities and differences in the usage characteristics and functions of the emoticons chosen by students in the group discussion.In two groups,the students both choose to use emoticons in their daily chatting.Emoticons are acceptable in both groups.The most frequently used emoticons in each group possess similar features.Whereas,there exist huge differences on participation of members,the amount of emoticons,the choice of emoticons with different sentimental colors and the choice of system emoticons and user-defined emoticons.In the group discussion,Chinese students and Russian-speaking students are flexible to use emoticons to supplement the context,coordinate interpersonal relationships,and soften the tone of discourse.Chinese students in the group discussion also use the emoticons to express their intention.What's more,multimodal metaphors found in the group chatting composed by emoticons and words,not only contain the metaphor of "A is B",but also embody the type of “A-ing is B-ing”.