Kisses and peaches. A pragmatic perspective on how emojis are used by online child sexual groomers

[EN] Emojis are mentioned in online child sexual grooming (OCSG) studies. However, research on such emojis in OCSG contexts is still in its infancy. In this investigation, we report the findings of the first linguistic analysis of emojis in OCSG discourse. The data comprise 70 chat logs (103,386 words, 3604 emojis) between offenders and real minors. The analysis, using a corpus-assisted discourse studies approach (Partington 2010), indicates that groomers predominantly use rapport enhancement and maintenance orientated emojis (Spencer-Oatey 2005). This suggests that groomers employ emojis to shape their interactions feigning a false love relationship/ friendship with their victims, which reveals their clear manipulation tactics. Finally, an analysis of collocates for two of the most frequent emojis (red heart¿ andsmirking face ¿) is presented. The results show that they collocate with endearment terms, sexually vague and explicit terms, which highlights that emojis are a strategy employed in groomers¿ discourse for a certain purpose.