Self-praise on social media WeChat Moments in L1 and L2 Chinese

Abstract

To date, second language (L2) pragmatics research has predominantly focused on learners’ oral communication, with digital communication being much less examined. In addition, although L2 pragmatics has mainly investigated speech acts, self-praise has not been examined from the L2 perspective. Therefore, this study investigates instances of self-praise posted by learners of Chinese on social networking sites. Data were collected from 20 advanced learners of Chinese who were asked to share instances of self-praise they posted on their WeChat Moments. Altogether, 61 learners’ self-praise posts in L2 Chinese and 100 instances of self-praise from 20 Chinese native speakers were collected. The learners’ Chinese self-praise was analyzed in terms of different pragmatic strategies and emoji uses, with comparisons against the native speakers’ practices. Similarities and differences were analyzed between the two groups’ self-praise strategies and their emoji use in self-praise posts. The findings showed that the advanced learners were able to employ the three major types of self-praise strategies in their self-praise posts on WeChat Moments. However, their repertoires of individual self-praise strategies and emojis were not as wide as those of native speakers. In addition, the learners showed divergences from the native speakers in terms of their preferred self-praise strategies and culture-relevant emojis.