Flirting and winking in Tinder chats

Existing research across the diverse field(s) of ‘discourse studies’ has started to explore the communicative orders and sequential practices surrounding emoji use (Skovholt, Grønning and Kankaanranta 2014; Herring and Dainas 2017; Gibson, Huang and Yu 2018; Sampietro 2019). However, researchers have not yet systematically analysed one of the demonstrable phenomena of emoji, which is their ambiguity as meaning-making devices (Miller et al. 2016; Jaeger et al. 2017). This study draws on Conversation Analysis to explore the issue of ambiguity in the use of one particular type of emoji, the wink (e.g., 😉, 🥴, 😜). Drawing on a data corpus of text conversations in Danish and in Spanish by users of the dating app ‘Tinder’, the analysis explores the phenomena of ambiguity in relation to the practice of flirting. The paper highlights four possible sources of ambiguity: idiosyncratic use, semiotic references, sequential placement, and relationship to ambiguous textual actions. The paper ends with reflections on possible future areas of research in the study of emoji and communication.