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Article published In:
Lingvisticæ Investigationes
Vol. 44:2 (2021) ► pp.204–235

Signaling irony, displaying politeness, replacing words

The eight linguistic functions of emoji in computer-mediated discourse

| Université Catholique de Louvain

This paper aims to identify and define the different linguistic functions that emoji can carry in French and English computer-mediated discourse (CMD). Emoji are graphical icons, representing attitudes or concepts, that can be used on any smartphone or computer with a variety of communicative roles inside a conversation. Using a multimodal corpus containing 1200 emoji and the messages in which they were used, we tested an initial typology of emoji functions inspired by previous frameworks. The quantitative analysis of the data, along with the detailed examination of specific examples, led to the construction of a new, more refined typology consisting of three primary functions (expressive, interpretative and referential) and five secondary functions (relational, politeness, emphatic, structural and aesthetic).

Keywords: emoji, conversation, social media, computer-mediated communication, discourse analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The linguistic functions of emoji
    • 2.1The expressive function
    • 2.2The interpretative function
    • 2.3The relational function
    • 2.4The politeness function
    • 2.5The emphatic function
    • 2.6The structural function
    • 2.7The referential function
    • 2.8Summary
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus
    • 3.2Annotation
    • 3.3Methods
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Preliminary observations
    • 4.2Distribution of emoji functions
    • 4.3The influence of internal factors
      • 4.3.1Emoji types
      • 4.3.2Emoji categories
      • 4.3.3Emoji positions
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Review of the initial typology
    • 5.2A revised typology of emoji functions
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 21 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/li.00062.esc
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