Attitude markers and discursive othering

Linguistic stance in QAnon+ discourse is constructed through a combination of explicit attitude markers, hostile nomination, and value-laden predication, jointly performing affective escalation and in-group/out-group boundary-making, as illustrated in examples (1)–(5).

1. (1) They are an invasive species that is a net tax drain, commits lots of crime, and has an IQ only slightly higher than Blacks.

2. (2) Cheap labor and taxpayer funded living

3. (3) A line of morons!

4. (4) Dear God protect us from Biden’s sick evil minions

5. (5) There’s a BUS FULL OF FUTURE Liberal Voters….the Tards have to bribe the imports….freebies in America if you vote Liberal

Example (1), posted in response to a video depicting a large group of migrants described as an “invasion” at the US southern border, employs explicit negative attitude markers such as “invasive species”, “net tax drain”, and “lots of crime”. These terms function as a series of affectively charged expressions that do more than merely convey attitude. They operate through exclusionary nomination, with “they” constructing migrants as a collective faceless group, and through predication, by ascribing criminality, economic burden, and intellectual inferiority to them. This discursive pattern goes beyond the expression of personal animus to legitimise exclusionary views by framing migrants as existential threats in biological, social, and moral terms. Such strategic use of affective language is a hallmark of extreme far-right discourse, where hostile categorisation and negative attribution are weaponised to normalise racism and present radical responses as justified against a threatening ‘other’ (Faragó, Kende, & Krekó Reference Faragó, Kende and Krekó2019). Example (2) is posted in response to a video captioned as “invasion by design … send them to Canada”. It adopts a similar model of othering by labelling immigrants as “labor”, an anthroponym that identifies them only by their social role as undifferentiated economic actors. This label is further reinforced by predication in “cheap” and “taxpayer funded living”, which frames them as burdensome and parasitic. This linguistic framing activates the topos of economic burden, a classic argumentative move in populist and nationalist rhetoric (Reisigl & Wodak Reference Reisigl and Wodak2001, Reference Reisigl, Wodak, Wodak and Meyer2015), constructing immigrants as a dual threat, undermining local livelihoods and draining public resources. The comment itself is exemplary of those articulated from the perspective of the “ordinary taxpayer”, amplifying collective resentment towards both the out-group and perceived elite enablers, which, in turn, justifies exclusionary attitudes as a matter of social justice.

The comment, “A line of morons!” in example (3), is posted directly in response to a video depicting family members and sponsors waiting to pick up migrants at the border. This single phrase functions as an attitude marker and a means of dehumanising the out-group (here, the supporters and facilitators of migration and not the migrants themselves directly) by turning them into objects of ridicule. Similar patterns appear elsewhere in the dataset, such as in “They look Middle Eastern”, “They look like convicts or detainees”, and “Crawling over a wall like a bunch of rats in a sewer”. The animal metaphor, in particular, is an inflammatory labelling, predicating subhuman traits onto the out-group, a pattern also documented in the far-right discourse literature, where out-groups are likened to swarms, insects, or other vermin (Hart Reference Hart2021). Taken together, these discursive strategies assert a stance of disdainful superiority that, per Culpeper’s (Reference Culpeper2011) account of conventional impoliteness, function to provoke, maintain social distance, and reinforce group boundaries.

Examples (4) and (5) both channel affective and moral urgency through a blend of negative labelling, attitude markers, and a conspiratorial perspective on political processes. In example (4), the plea “Dear God protect us from Biden’s sick evil minions” has been made in response to a video shared on the channel, depicting immigrants in Texas being reportedly armed. It draws on explicitly negative descriptors and religious invocation to frame political opponents and their allies as fundamentally corrupt and morally threatening. The term minions frames the out-group as passive instruments of a malign agenda. Similarly, example (5), “There’s a BUS FULL OF FUTURE Liberal Voters….the Tards have to bribe the imports….freebies in America if you vote Liberal”, which is made in response to a video depicting a bus transporting immigrants from an assistance centre to destinations across the US, echoes the conspiratorial logic by claiming that migration is manipulated for electoral advantage. Here, political actors are nominated as “Tards”, while migrants are labelled as “imports” and further predicated as future voters and recipients of unearned benefits. Together, the patterned use of attitude markers, hostile nomination, and negative predication forms a broader performative script that sustains in-group solidarity and legitimises exclusion. In essence, these metrical and patterned linguistic resources (Lempert Reference Lempert2008) do social work by intensifying affect and motivating communal alignment.

Boosters and affective escalation

As shown in Table 1, boosters are the second most frequently used strategy in our dataset, accounting for 37.11% of occurrences. Employed to increase certainty, intensify emotional urgency, and escalate rhetorical force, their frequent use in QAnon+ reflects a broader pattern in right-wing populist communication, where heightened language constructs a sense of crisis and immediacy (Yerly Reference Yerly2022). Across examples (6)–(11), we observe how intensification is realised through various linguistic devices—for example, augmentatives, hyperboles, imperatives, rhetorical questions, and so on—all of which act as boosters in Hyland’s (Reference Hyland2005:129) terms, amplifying the speaker’s stance and projecting certainty. While boosters are conceptualised as lexico-grammatical resources that emphasise ‘the force of propositions’, our analysis shows that, in digital discourse, these are often intertwined with what Lempert (Reference Lempert2008) describes as performance-based and text-metrical strategies. Drawing on his notion of metrical organisation, features such as emphatic spelling, exclamation marks, and patterned escalation, originally theorised in the context of oral poetic performance, become especially salient in digital spaces, or what Zappavigna & Logi (Reference Zappavigna and Logi2024) term ‘dialogic’ or ‘communing affiliative’ spaces, where these resources shift stance from the merely propositional to the socially performative.

1. (6) Civil war coming soon!

2. (7) Look how the INVASION waves at the camera! CLOSE IT NOW!

3. (8) UNREAL

4. (9) Absolutely RIDICULOUS!!

In example (6), posted in response to a video highlighting perceived injustices against Americans compared to immigrants, the utterance is intensified by its directness and the use of hyperbole and absolute certainty, without any hedging or mitigation. It adopts an apocalyptic and mobilising stance, drawing on the topos of imminent threat/danger to situate the audience within a shared crisis narrative. In example (7), the caption accompanying the main post’s video of immigrants crossing the border employs an augmentative (“invasion” as an exaggerated representation of migration) and imperative (“CLOSE IT NOW!”) to escalate the perceived threat through intensification and performative urgency. By labelling immigrants as “the invasion” and predicating them with the human action of “waving at the camera”, the comment anthropomorphises the group and frames them as deliberately provocative. The commenter dramatises migration as a hostile incursion that can fuel fear and legitimise extreme responses, echoing classic strategies of securitisation and othering in far-right discourse (Lazaridis & Tsagkroni Reference Lazaridis, Tsagkroni, Lazaridis and Wadia2015). Example (8), “UNREAL”, posted in response to a video depicting immigrants climbing and crossing the border wall, employs capitalisation as a visual intensifier, while the strong evaluative adjective amplifies the emotional charge of the stance. This combination exemplifies how paralinguistic boosters and attitude markers in this context co-perform affect and intensify the emotional register of the stance that can animate ideological alignment within the in-group. In example (9), as part of the main post announcing New York City’s approval of voting rights for noncitizen residents, linguistic and typographic resources come together to amplify the stance. The capitalisation of “RIDICULOUS”, the adverbial booster “absolutely”, and the double exclamation marks work together to intensify emotional force and signal categorical rejection. Typography functions here as a digital proxy for prosodic emphasis, transforming the written utterance into an act of communal stimulation: the speaker both voices their outrage and models it for others in the imagined audience. Here again, boosters and attitude markers escalate affect, police the boundaries of collective identity, and co-perform the stance of outraged dismissal that is emblematic of far-right digital discourse.

1. (10) More like HELLLLLLLLL NOOOOOOOOOO

2. (11) Disgusting repulsive and truly just unbelievable I cannot imagine anybody being okay with our tax money going to people breaking the law I mean this is just beyond comprehension. Getting more than our service members this can’t stand why are people not outraged more I mean if this doesn’t wake people up what will?

Especially prominent among the boosters are those with pronounced text-metrical structures. The exaggerated letter repetition in “HELLLLLLLLLL NOOOOOOOOOO” (in example (10) in response to a poll about financial compensation for undocumented immigrants) and the repeated red exclamation marks () serve as powerful boosters that enact an intensified affective and evaluative stance of refusal toward the proposition (here, the idea of letting immigrants in) by showing zero tolerance. This orthographic intensity, that is, the elongation of letters, capitalisation, and punctuation, visually mimics the intonational excess and heightened emotional pitch typical of shouting in oral performance. While a clipped “HELL NO” still communicates refusal, the elongated form dramatises the stance and marks the boundary as uncompromising in response to perceived threats. In line with Lempert’s (Reference Lempert2008) concept of metrical performance, such use of boosters not only indexes the speaker’s epistemic and deontic stance but also models the affective stance expected in the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson Reference Anderson1983) and shapes how members align themselves emotionally and rhetorically in this digital space.

A similar example is example (11), which is a response to a comment contrasting military life-insurance payouts with proposed compensation for undocumented immigrants. It layers strong adjectives such as “disgusting”, “repulsive”, and “unbelievable” to achieve a cumulative effect that intensifies the emotional register and accentuates the speaker’s stance of moral outrage. Repetition here, as Lempert (Reference Lempert2008) asserts, becomes a means of socially situated positioning, not just a lexical echo. Furthermore, as Jeffries (Reference Jeffries and Burke2023) notes, the stylistic use of a three-part list introduces rhythm by clustering similar ideas, which serves to heighten both the persuasive force and dramatic intensity of the stance. Boosters such as “truly”, “just”, and repeated phrases like “I mean” further amplify the affective force and draw attention to the speaker’s disbelief and anger. The repeated self-mention (“I cannot imagine” and “I mean”) personalises the stance, presenting the speaker as both witness and judge of the injustice described. Rhetorical questions, “why are people not outraged more”, and “if this doesn’t wake people up what will?”, invite a collective moral awakening and potentially stimulate in-group alignment. The speaker invokes the topos of injustice and moral responsibility and positions themselves as the voice of the aggrieved patriotic taxpayer defending the values of the in-group. The frequent co-occurrence of boosters (e.g. repetition and capitalisation) and attitude markers (e.g. evaluative adjectives or emotive language) in the data reflects a performative style of stance-taking that not only expresses emotion but also invites ideological alignment within the in-group by amplifying the collective affect and encouraging shared outrage.

Self-mentions and hedges

Both self-mentions and hedges were comparatively rare in the dataset, appearing far less frequently than attitude markers or boosters (8.47% and 4.77%, respectively). Self-mentions, expressed through personal pronouns or possessive adjectives, are typically a means for authors to construct subjectivity and signal a personal stake. However, in the context of QAnon anti-immigration comments, these moves function less as statements of opinion and more as strategic resources, often to prepare the ground for condemnation or punitive propositions and to perform in-group solidarity through shared grievances. Phrases like ‘I think a gun would solve that’, ‘In my opinion they come to rob and steal from America’, and ‘The only answer to stop this is I believe, the military’ are frequently situated within narratives of testimonial victimhood, eyewitness authority, or insider perspective, but pragmatically serve to preface the hateful and exclusionary propositions that follow.

1. (12) I’m sorry, but they should go straight to prison.

2. (13) I paid a lot of money for my visa. I am a US citizen who pays taxes. They are going to come in for free?- How preposterous when so many people have paid thousands of dollars and studied long hours to earn the right of citizen including my husband.

3. (14) Likely given with a warm place to sleep while I sit here in Texas in - 4 temps and no heat, power or water for 19 straight hours. And they don’t have to get a COVID test to just sashay in

In example (12), the polite hedge “I’m sorry” (a self-mention marker to show reluctance) precedes an unhedged punitive stance (“should go straight to prison”) in response to content discussing migrants receiving preferential treatment, such as four-star accommodations, which other commenters contrast with the neglect of veterans. The seemingly softened apologetic approach is used as a preface to ease into a radical suggestion with the modal “should” and the adverb “straight”, amplifying the speaker’s stance. CDA scholars note that such face-saving disclaimers allow speakers to preserve a positive self-image (e.g. as polite or fair-minded) even as they voice harsh or extreme sentiments. Indeed, van Dijk (Reference van Dijk1992) observed that ‘disclaimers’ such as ‘I am not racist, but…’ perform a dual positioning: they portray the speaker as reasonable and/or nonracist (part of the moral in-group) while still cueing a negative remark about an out-group. Notably, the immigrants who have gained US citizenship appear to be as hostile as the local members against the newly arrived immigrants and the perceived undue advantages granted to them. In example (13), which is posted in a thread where both legal immigrants and citizens react with frustration to posts about border crossings, the author recounts their financial hardships and status as a US citizen, positioning themselves as a legitimate member of the in-group. They broaden the argument from a personal to a collective level, citing the experiences of many who have incurred significant costs for citizenship. The phrase “how preposterous” serves as an evaluative attitude marker, intensifying their stance on the issue. In example (14), which is a comment responding to the same post mentioned in example (9), the commenter takes a testimonial perspective, “I sit here in Texas”, to foreground personal hardship and set up a direct contrast with the perceived comfort afforded to immigrants. The hedge, “likely given a warm place to sleep”, introduces speculation, while the phrase “just sashay in” employs sarcasm and an attitude marker to delegitimise the immigrants. The sequence of intensifiers, “-4 temps, no heat, power or water for 19 straight hours”, supports the speaker’s grievance and dramatises the sense of injustice. The overall effect is to elicit sympathy for the in-group while expressing exclusionary attitudes, with self-mention and hedging functioning not to moderate but to heighten personal and collective resentment.

Often framed as an opinion, hedges signal uncertainty through markers such as maybe, seem, likely, could be, and so forth (Hyland Reference Hyland2005). They allow writers to soften statements and reduce the risk of direct refutation. In QAnon+ anti-immigration discourse, hedging (despite its low occurrence) enables the presentation of inflammatory ideas, conspiracy theories, fearmongering, and hostility in a more palatable form.

1. (15) Maybe Mayorkas is keeping dangerous criminals here for a reason: as an army of potential terrorists and replacement enforcers

2. (16) Sad, all these people could be infected with COVID. Seems a very unnecessary risk for America

3. (17) Lol..electric fence,just saying

Example (15) appears as part of the main post, which frames immigration as a deliberate threat by the ‘Biden Regime’. It deploys a hedge (“maybe”) to introduce doubt, triggering conspiracy thinking about government motives. It positions the US Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, as deliberately retaining criminal immigrants to build an army. The comment layers attitude markers (“dangerous criminals”, “potential terrorists”, and “replacement enforcers”) and a booster (“army of”) to escalate the sense of the threat. It mobilises deep-state tropes, directly referencing the Great Replacement or White Genocide conspiracy theories, which often invoke anxieties about white identity and the perceived need to defend it against threats posed by immigration. The comment resonates with widespread far-right concerns about preserving white identity and resisting multiculturalism and demographic change (Wodak Reference Wodak2015). The comment rests on the topos of purpose, where the alleged intention behind government action is treated as evidence of its illegitimacy, thus justifying extreme suspicion and radical opposition. In response to a video depicting immigrants crossing a river, the commenter in example (16) opens with “Sad” as an affective stance marker, then deploys hedging through “could be infected with COVID” and “seems a very unnecessary risk”, layering evaluative modalisation onto the claim. The comment positions immigrants as bearers of disease and frames their presence as a public health risk, via the topos of threat. By foregrounding disappointment (“Sad”) while employing hedged language (“could” and “seems”), the comment legitimises xenophobic attitudes under the pretext of national safety. A related tactic appears in example (17), which is made in response to the same poll as in example (10), where the commenter combines humour (“lol”) and hedging (“just saying”) to introduce a violent proposal in a casual way. This discursive strategy serves to normalise an otherwise extreme stance by packaging it as a light-hearted joke. Taken together, the marked scarcity of both self-mention and hedging relative to the overwhelming use of attitude markers and boosters aligns with the literature on affective extremism in digital echo chambers (KhosraviNik Reference KhosraviNik2017). In such spaces, stance is performed primarily through collective outrage and emphatic certainty rather than through personal positioning or mitigation. This style of communication minimises the space for doubt and individual reflexivity and instead performs social work by strengthening communal alignment.

Emoji–text convergence

The integration of emojis with text creates powerful multimodal ensembles that amplify, inflect, or occasionally complicate the stance and affect communicated by linguistic strategies alone. In this section, we discuss how emojis coordinate with meaning made in the linguistic co-text. As shown in Table 2, emoji–text convergence is overwhelmingly interpersonal in nature in QAnon+ anti-immigration comments.

Table 2.

Emoji–text convergence in QAnon+ anti-immigration comments.

Specifically, interpersonal (via resonance) dominates the dataset, with 77.1% of multimodal comments involving emojis that directly imbue or enmesh the stance of the accompanying text. Notably, the most frequent pattern, harmonise via echo and harmonise via coalesce (together 58.3%), demonstrates that emojis often serve to echo the affective force of the text. In contrast, ideational convergence via concurrence (where emojis simply depict or embellish the text content) is much less common (8.3% each), showing that the communicative function of emojis in this discourse is primarily affiliative and less representational. Textual convergence via synchronicity, where emojis merely punctuate or synchronise with the flow of discourse, accounts for only a small fraction (2.1% punctuate, 4.2% inset). Overall, these patterns reveal that in QAnon+ anti-immigration discourse, emojis are mobilised to co-perform affect and alignment. This finding substantiates the argument that stance in digital extremism is not only multimodal but performative, with emojis functioning as key resources for affective escalation and in-group alignment around exclusionary and radical positions.

The following set of examples (18)–(21) illustrates how outrage and othering are co-performed through emoji–text convergence, amplifying affective stance and encouraging group alignment.

1. (18) Looks like that wall don’t work. people have to stand up against these people walking away with keys to our kingdom. They are all thieves

2. (19) No fucking way!!!

3. (20) They are not Migrants! They are not Undocumented Immigrants! They are not Asylum Seekers! They are…ILLEGAL ALIENS! Repeat after me… ILLEGAL ALIENS! They are CRIMINALS!” They gained that status the moment they crossed our Border! Every Communist Democrat that has enabled this…. is a Criminal as well!

4. (21) Definitely not families looking for a better life.

Example (18) is posted in response to the same video discussed in example (8), which shows immigrants climbing and crossing the border wall. Here, stance and affect are constructed multimodally through tightly coordinated emoji–text pairings. The opening phrase introduces epistemic hedging and a tentative evaluative stance, which the thinking face emoji () immediately reinforces, enmeshing with the co-text to echo the skepticism (albeit ironically) and encourage the reader to adopt a similarly questioning position. According to Zappavigna & Logi (Reference Zappavigna and Logi2024), this is an echo relation: the emoji and text reinforce the same evaluative stance, with the emoji serving as a prosodic intensifier that marks the interpersonal mood as doubtful or reflective. The comment then escalates as the angry face emoji () precedes the imperative, visually echoing and amplifying the affective intensity of the verbal stance markers (“stand up”, “thieves”). This convergence again functions as enmesh-echo, where the emoji and text reinforce one another, with the emoji serving to visually dramatise and co-perform the collective outrage. The result is an intensified affective stance, where emoji and language operate collectively to signal and recruit shared in-group affect (Zappavigna & Logi Reference Zappavigna and Logi2024). Overall, through these enmesh-echo relations, the comment does not merely express individual emotion but performatively orchestrates affect and stance within the in-group, strengthening the emotional cohesion of the community. In example (19), which responds to the same poll as in examples (10) and (17), “No fucking way!!! ”, linguistic and visual stance markers are powerfully enmeshed to dramatise absolute rejection. The explicit booster (“No fucking way!!!”) is already an emphatic stance marker, deploying profanity, exclamation, and intensifiers to signal strong refusal and affective alignment. The immediate sequence of multiple emojis visually intensifies and coalesces with the textual stance, forming a single multimodal burst of outrage. This enmeshment does not simply echo but fuses the linguistic and visual elements that can amplify the emotional mood and transform the utterance into a performative act. Therefore, emojis here do not merely supplement the text. They saturate the commenter’s affective-evaluative stance and enact the affiliative and exclusionary dynamics typical of far-right digital discourse.

Example (20) is part of the main post in the channel and leverages a formulaic, metrically patterned structure, characterised by deliberate repetition and redefining in “They are not Migrants! They are not Undocumented Immigrants! They are not Asylum Seekers! They are…ILLEGAL ALIENS!”, which produces a rhythmic, chant-like slogan. These recurrent, conventionalised expressions act as boosters and perform social work by positioning the speaker within a collective rooted in shared values and outrage. Through this patterned textual performance, shared affect is mobilised and ideological alignment is enacted within the digital space (Lempert Reference Lempert2008). The discourse then shifts from immigrants to political adversaries (“Every Communist Democrat that has enabled this… is a Criminal as well!”). The top hat emoji (), placed directly after the accusation, operates ideationally through concurrence via embellish, which visually stands in symbolically for a stigmatised group (classic imagery of criminal masterminds or corrupt elites, here Democrats). Rather than referencing a literal object, the emoji here draws on cultural associations with villainy, corruption, or elitism, which amplifies the delegitimising move articulated in the text. Even when the text itself does not explicitly foreground negative evaluation, as in example (21) responding to a post presenting migration as a coordinated invasion, the immediate placement of the angry face emoji () functions through interpersonal resonance to imbue the entire utterance with affective intensity.

Examples (22)–(25) centre on sarcasm, violent humour, and patriotic mobilisation, where emoji–text convergence fuses ridicule, hostility, and solidarity into performative alignment.

1. (22) Bring in the crocodile

2. (23) Just one shot?

3. (24) Drop a bomb . Problem solved!

4. (25) I love the idea of people coming together and building it! Let’s do it! Screw it- we the people need to stand. usususus

Example (22) is a comment posted in response to the main post featured in example (20) that emphatically labels immigrants as “illegal aliens” and “criminals”. Here, the crocodile emoji operates through ideational concurrence via depict, with the emoji placed in immediate proximity to the text, directly illustrating the referenced object. However, the ideological and dehumanising force is enacted at the discourse-pragmatic level, where the crocodile serves as a coded incitement of violence (a reference to the supposed presence of crocodiles in the Rio Grande River). In other words, beyond mere depiction, the emoji situates the comment within a repertoire of hostile in-group humour (Hakoköngäs et al. Reference Hakoköngäs and Halmesvaara2020). This pattern of pairing text with corresponding emoji recurs in the following examples, where visual cues amplify the sarcastic, exclusionary, or violent dimensions of the utterance, demonstrating how the multimodal ensemble functions as performative group alignment in the digital space. Example (23) is a response to footage of a violent altercation involving an immigrant being shot. It is a nuanced case that demonstrates how emoji–text relations are not always neatly separable. The rhetorical question, “Just one shot?” is immediately followed by the eye-roll emoji (), which operates through interpersonal resonance, enmeshing and harmonising with the text. While the question itself may cue sarcasm or critique, it remains potentially ambiguous in isolation. The eye-roll emoji does not simply echo a specific word or phrase; rather, it imbues the entire utterance with mocking affect, thus performatively rendering sarcasm more explicit.

Example (24), responding to the same video showing immigrants crossing a river as in example (16), illustrates ideational text-image concurrence via both depict and embellish. The bomb and explosion emojis follow the directive, visually dramatising the violent ‘solution’ and amplifying its affective force. Proximity ensures tight semantic mapping, where the emoji directly depicts the bomb (call to violence), while the embellishes this act, serving as a metonymic extension, representing both the immediate result (explosion) and the escalation of violence. Together, the emojis construct a stylised, almost cartoonish narrative of anti-immigration sentiment. This multimodal stance differs from purely verbal incitement by enacting violence iconically and instantaneously. Emojis provide a vivid, shared visual cue that triggers more immediate and visceral affect than text alone (Zappavigna & Logi Reference Zappavigna and Logi2024). The stacking of and intensifies and normalises the dehumanising stance, inviting the audience to frame violence as an acceptable solution, an effect well-documented in radicalising digital discourse (Ebner, Kavanagh, & Whitehouse Reference Ebner, Kavanagh and Whitehouse2022; Marcks & Pawelz Reference Marcks and Pawelz2022).

Example (25) appears within a discussion about citizens finishing the border wall to prevent crossings. It demonstrates the coalescence of multiple emojis to amplify and generalise the affective and communal force of the utterance. The cluster of emojis () follows a series of rallying imperatives and expressions of collective resolve (“Let’s do it! Screw it- we the people need to stand”). The emoji cluster acts as a visual and affective crescendo, enmeshing and harmonising with the text to elevate its call for solidarity. The repeated US flags anchor the message in a shared national identity, not as a direct referent but as a generalised patriotic affect. The heart exclamation is an added layer of emotional investment, while the raised hands signify collective affirmation and celebration. In this configuration, the emoji cluster does not operate as isolated stance markers; instead, it functions performatively to visually mobilise the in-group alignment and add communal purpose articulated in the verbal message.

Dialogic affiliation: Emoji-only responses

While much of the multimodal stance in the dataset involves combinations of text and emoji, there are also instances where comments consist only of emojis. Emoji-only responses function as a compressed means of affective (dis)alignment. In addressing how emojis index the affective state of commenters in the QAnon+ dialogic Telegram channel, we found that they function unanimously to rally, aligning commenters in support of the anti-immigration proposition with various effects, such as escalate/affirm, ridicule/contempt, or celebrate/patriotism and dismiss/detachment (as shown in Table 3), analysed in their context of direct response to the original post.

Table 3.

Dialogic affiliation categories in QAnon+ anti-immigration emoji-only comments.

As shown in Table 3, the emoji-only responses serve to rally via escalating or affirming group sentiment, typically via repeated use of anger, outrage, call to action (for example, the black flag associated with anarchism or a call to escalate resistance), or exasperation emojis. These forms of rallying signal not only personal affect but also collective emotional alignment.

1. (26) [main post] ‘The Biden admin has reversed a rule change proposed by President Trump that would prevent issuing work permits to illegal immigrants who have been ordered deported. So yes, Biden is now putting criminals ahead of citizens. Full Article [link].’

   [emoji-only response]

In example (26), the combination of (angry face) and (middle finger) functions as a coalescing emoji cluster, which together escalate collective outrage and visually dismiss both the policy and its proponents. This co-occurrence intensifies the emotional force of the response, transforming individual reactions into a compressed multimodal act of group alignment.

Emoji-only responses also operate through ridicule or contempt directed at the out-group (e.g. piles of poo, vomiting, mocking laughter, eye rolls), performing delegitimation through visual mockery or disgust.

1. (27) [main post] ‘Take your a** home!’ Heavily-armed black rights groups march through Austin chanting anti-illegal migrant slogans, demands Biden ‘close the border’ and calls for reparations to be paid NOW

   [emoji-only response]

In example (27), the vomiting emoji expresses affective disgust, not solely toward immigrants, but toward the spectacle of Black rights activists appropriating far-right anti-immigrant rhetoric. This response sets boundaries within the in-group by using visuals to delegitimise both the actors and the act of message appropriation, delineating whose voices and views are considered acceptable in the anti-immigration community.

Other emoji types focus on celebration or patriotism (e.g. flags, clapping, national pride), visually affirming in-group identity and shared values.

1. (28) [main post] DeSantis tells it like it is. 3 out of 4 people arrested for looting have been illegal aliens in the aftermath of the hurricane: “They’re illegally in our country. Not only that, they tried to loot & ransack in the aftermath of a natural disaster. They need to be sent back to their home country. They should not be here at all.”

   [emoji-only response]

   usususususus

In example (28), the string of (clapping) and (US flag) emojis functions as a coalescing display of celebration and patriotism, visually rallying around DeSantis’s call for the removal of undocumented immigrants involved in looting and reinforcing collective identity.

The remaining emojis express dismissal or detachment (e.g. zipped lips, facepalm, neutral faces, suspicious expressions, or the middle finger), which often serve to distance the user from the out-group or from the topic, while still indexing in-group solidarity as seen in the response to the Biden administration’s policy reversal earlier. Our findings show that whether used alone or with linguistic co-text, emojis function as potent resources that intensify affect, and co-perform exclusionary sentiments and enact communal alignment in QAnon+ anti-immigration discourse.