The Effect Of Emoji And Its Congruity In The Cognitive Processing Of Irony Comprehension Among Chinese EFL Learners

Irony,as the representative type of figurative language,has attracted much attention in the field of second language acquisition.In the era of industrial informatization and intellectualization,Web 2.0 tools have impacted the cognitive processing stages of ironic utterances among Chinese EFL learners imperceptibly.Although previous researches have investigated the impacts of nonverbal cues and participants’ subjectivity in the irony comprehension process,such as prosody,gestures,intimacy among interlocutors,communicative styles,etc,from the perspectives of linguistics and psychology,few studies shed light on the new emerging CMC cues,like emojis,as well as the interactive relationship among emojis,contextual information,human bodies,minds,mental states,etc.,ignoring the unity of irony processing.Based on previous researches,this study intends to explore the role of emoji and its congruity with contextual information on the irony comprehension process among Chinese EFL learners based on the computer mediated communication mode.Besides,we try to investigate the cognitive processing mechanism of irony comprehension,so as to promote the cultivation of high level professional foreign language talents in the era of educational informatization.To be specific,this research will be conducted by the following three research questions:1.What’s the role of emojis in the cognitive processing of irony comprehension among Chinese EFL learners?2.How will the degree of congruity between emojis and contextual information influence L2 learners’ performances(reaction time/response accuracy)during the irony comprehension process in written CMC?3.How will ironic types(positive irony/negative irony)and their emotional valence affect Chinese EFL learners’ performances in irony comprehension test?Participants of this research are 55 college students from Central South University,involving two experiments.Experiment one adopts a two-factor(2 the presence of emojis × 4 sentence types)within subject design,and intends to investigate the role of emojis in the irony comprehension process.Experiment two also conducts a two-factor(2emotional valence × 3 degree of congruity)within subject design,and aims to investigate how do degree of congruity between emojis and contextual information influence the irony comprehension process among Chinese EFL learners.Based on the psycholinguistic tool of E-Prime 2.0,this study records participants’ behaviors(response accuracy/reaction time)in the irony comprehension tests and analyzes the experimental results by descriptive statistics,repeated measures of ANOVAs,simple main effect analysis in SPSS 26.0.The major findings of this research are as follows.(1)The presence of emojis will be beneficial for irony comprehension among Chinese EFL learners,which will,to some extent,increase participants’ response accuracy and facilitate participants’ reaction rate in the irony comprehension tests.(2)The degree of congruity between emojis and contextual information will make a difference in the cognitive processing of ironic utterances.In general,higher degree of congruity often indicates participants’ better performances in the irony comprehension test.However,students behave better in the experimental condition of weak congruity during the positive irony comprehension process than that in the congruent condition,which has close links with L2 learners’ embodied experiences,the emotional valence of emojis and coincides the constraint satisfactory parallel model.(3)The cognitive effort of processing ironic utterances is larger than that of literal languages.Among ironic utterances,positive irony is more difficult to comprehend than negative irony,which indirectly supports the graded salience hypothesis.Emojis,serving as the nonverbal cues in written CMC environment,could conduct the functions of delivering grounded message,indicating interlocutors’ communicative intentions and adjusting the existing atmosphere.Emojis would guide interlocutors to quickly decode the underlying intentions of target utterances by enhancing environmental information,deepening emotional effects and physical connections during L2 learners’ irony comprehension process.In this standpoint,this thesis might open up a new perspective for researches in the field of L2 irony processing among Chinese EFL learners,and it might be helpful for L2learners’ further development during the SLA process.