| With the development of computer-mediated communication(CMC),social media has been quite diversified,and Emoji is one of the intriguing examples.As Emoji is able to express the user's feelings and emotions without language boundary,it has been very popular for online social media worldwide.Thus,it could be considered as a tool for intercultural communication in social media.However,different cultural backgrounds may cause misunderstandings of Emoji.Therefore,it is necessary to conduct a study on Emoji usage with different cultural backgrounds.This study intends to explore how Chinese and Japanese students use Emoji to do face-work,and how they use Emoji to show their relationship among them.According to Hall's theory,both Chinese and Japanese live in high-context culture,and they share the same characteristics of a high-context culture,such as face-work and relationship management.This thesis attempts to do research from the perspective of face-work and relationship management.Through survey reports and interviews of 93 Chinese students and 54 Japanese international students studying at Xi'an International Studies University(XISU),this research has explored the online behaviors of Emoji usage by the participants.The results show that Chinese and Japanese students have different ways to do face-work and manage their relationships.The results indicate that both Chinese and Japanese students use Emoji as tool for face-saving,but they use different strategies for face-saving.The results also indicate that both Chinese and Japanese students use Emoji to show their relationships among others,but they use Emoji to show different relationships.Besides,the results indicate that Hall's theory of high/low-context culture is partially applicable to social media in Emoji usage in online communication.As the research has provided a critical review of Hall's theory in online social media,it offers a reference to further Emoji studies from a cross-cultural perspective. |
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