Cover not available
Article published In:
Concepts and Context in Relevance-Theoretic Pragmatics: New Developments
Edited by Agnieszka Piskorska and Manuel Padilla Cruz
[Pragmatics 33:3] 2023
► pp. 393–417

Perceptual resemblance and the communication of emotion in digital contexts

A case of emoji and reaction GIFs

ORCID logo | Dublin City University
Online communication has created new ways to express emotions, including emoji and reaction GIFs. Emoji are often discussed as signs for meaning-making, adding emotional tone to communication. Reaction GIFs express emotions and attitudes in a playful manner. This study shows that through the lens of cognitive pragmatics, these phenomena are not distinct. Both are cases of non-verbal communication pointing to the communicator’s emotional state. Drawing on relevance-theoretic notions of the showing-meaning continuum and perceptual resemblance, along with relevance-theoretic analyses of metaphor and irony, I argue that emoji and reaction GIFs provide clues to ostension and communicate emotions by virtue of perceptual resemblance between what they represent and the communicator’s emotional state. I will also argue that both emoji and GIFs can involve echoic use of language, enabling the communicator to convey their attitude.
Keywords: relevance, perceptual resemblance, the showing-meaning continuum, metaphor, irony, communication of emotion
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous studies
    • 2.1The semantics and pragmatics of emoji
    • 2.2A relevance-theoretic account of emoji
    • 2.3Reaction GIFs
  • 3.Relevance theory
  • 4.Emoji, GIFs, and relevance
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21058.sas
References (62)
Bibliography
Aldredge, Jourdan. 2019. “The Michael Jackson Popcorn Gif and the Controversy of ‘Leaving Neverland’.” No Film School. Available at [URL]. Accessed 15 October 2020.
Ash, James, and Stephen Wilhite. 2015. “Sensation, Networks, and the GIF: Toward an Allotropic Account of Affect.” In Networked Affect, ed. by Ken Hillis, Susanna Paasonen, and Michael Petit, 119–133. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bai, Qiyu, Qi Dan, Zhe Mu, and Maokun Yang. 2019. “A Systematic Review of Emoji: Current Research and Future Perspectives.” Frontiers in Psychology 101: 2221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carston, Robyn. 1997. “Enrichment and Loosening: Complementary Processes in Deriving the Proposition Expressed?” Linguistische Berichte 81, Special Issue on Pragmatics: 103–127. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1999. “The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction: A View from Relevance Theory.” In The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface from Different Points of View, ed. by Ken Turner, 85–125. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
. 2002. Thoughts and Utterances. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Explicature and Semantics.” In Semantics: A Reader, ed. by S. Davis, and B. Gillon, 1–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2008. “Linguistic Communication and the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinctions.” Synthèse 165 (3): 321–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. “Metaphor: Ad Hoc Concepts, Literal Meaning and Mental Images.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (3): 295–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Lifen. 2017. “Do I Mean What I Say and Say What I Mean? A Cross-Cultural Approach to the Use of Emoticons & Emojis in CMC Messages.” FONSECA: Journal of Communication 151: 199–217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cho, Alexander. 2015. “Queer Reverb: Tumblr, Affect, Time.” In Networked Affect, ed. by Ken Hillis, Susanna Paasonen, and Michael Petit, 43–58. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collister, Lauren. 2015. “Textspeak is Modernizing the English Language.” New Republic. [URL]
Danesi, Marcel. 2017. The Semiotics of Emoji: The Rise of Visual Language in the Age of the Internet. London: Bloomsbury. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eppink, Jason. 2014. “A Brief History of the Gif (So Far).” Journal of Visual Culture 131: 298–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles. 1997. Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forceville, Charles. 2020. Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibson, Will, Pingping Huang, and Qianyun Yu. 2018. “Emoji and Communicative Action: The Semiotics, Sequence and Gestural Actions of ‘Face Covering Hand’.” Discourse, Context & Media 261: 91–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gülşen, Tüge. T. 2016. “You Tell Me in Emojis.” In Computational and Cognitive Approaches to Narratology, ed. by T. Ogata and T. Akimoto, 354–375. IGI Global. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hall, Jeffrey. A., and Natalie Pennington. 2013. “Self-Monitoring, Honesty, and Cue Use on Facebook: The Relationship with User Extraversion and Conscientiousness.” Computers in Human Behavior 291: 1556–1564. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hjartstrom, Hanna, Daniel E. Sörman, and Jessica K. Ljungberg. 2019. “Distraction and Facilitation: The Impact of Emotional Sounds in an Emoji Oddball Task.” PsyCh Journal 81: 180–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1971. On Communicative Competence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Jaeger, Sara R., and Gastón Ares. 2017. “Dominant Meanings of Facial Emoji: Insights from Chinese Consumers and Comparison with Meanings from Internet Resources.” Food Quality and Preference 621: 275–283. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaeger, Sara R., Christina M. Roigard, David Jin, Leticia Vidal, and Gastón Ares. 2019. “Valence, Arousal and Sentiment Meanings of 33 Facial Emoji: Insights for the Use of Emoji in Consumer Research.” Food Research International. 1191: 895–907. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. “Linguistics and Poetics.” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 34–45. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jibril, Ahmed Tanimu, and Mardziah Haytati Abdullah. 2013. “Relevance of Emoticons in Computer-Mediated Communication Contexts: An Overview.” Asian Social Science 91: 201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Katz, Yuval, and Limor Shifman. 2017. “Making Sense? The Structure and Meanings Of Digital Memetic Nonsense.” Information, Communication & Society 201: 825–842. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1994. “What is Metaphor?” Advances in Connectionist and Neural Computation Theory 31: 203–258.Google Scholar
López, Rebecca Padilla, and Fabienne Cap. 2017. “Did You Ever Read about Frogs Drinking Coffee? Investigating the Compositionality of Multi-Emoji Expressions.” Paper Presented at the 8th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Subjectivity, Sentiment and Social Media Analysis . DOI logo
Miltner, Kate M., and Tim Highfield. 2017. “Never Gonna GIF You Up: Analyzing the Cultural Significance of the Animated GIF.” Social Media and Society 3.31: 1–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paasonen, Susanna, Ken Hillis, and Michael Petit. 2015. “Introduction: Networks of Transmission: Intensity, Sensation, Value.” In Networked affect, ed. by Ken Hillis, Susanna Paasonen, and Michael Petit, 1–24. Cambridge: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prada, Marília, David L. Rodrigues, Margarida V. Garrido, Diniz Lopes, Bernardo Cavalheiro, and Rui Gaspar. 2018. “Motives, Frequency and Attitudes toward Emoji and Emoticon Use.” Telematics and Informatics 351: 1925–1934. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Riordan, Monica A. 2017. “Emojis as Tools for Emotion Work: Communicating Affect in Text Messages.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 361: 549–567. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sadiq, M., and Shahida. 2019. “Learning Pakistani Culture through the Namaz Emoji.” 2nd International Conference on Computing, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies (iCoMET): 1–8, DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sasamoto, Ryoko and Rebecca Jackson. 2016. “Onomatopoeia – Showing-Word or Saying-Word? Relevance Theory, Lexis, and the Communication of Impressions.” Lingua 1751: 36–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sasamoto, Ryoko. 2019. Onomatopoeia and Relevance Communication of Impressions via Sound. London: Palgrave MacMillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scott, Kate. 2017. “Prosody, Procedures and Pragmatics.” In Semantics and Pragmatics: Drawing a Line, ed. by I. Depraetere, and R. Salkie, 323–341. Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2022. Pragmatics Online. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Settanni, Michele, and Davide Marengo. 2015. “Sharing Feelings Online: Studying Emotional Well-Being Via Automated Text Analysis of Facebook Posts.” Frontiers in Psychology 61: 1045. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sha. 2016. “The Digital Materiality Of Gifs.” Retrieved from [URL]
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986/1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 1987. “Précis of Relevance: Communication and Cognition.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 101: 697–754. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998. “Irony and Relevance: A Reply to Seto, Hamamoto and Yamanashi.” In Relevance Theory. Applications and Implications. ed. by R. Carston, and S. Uchida, 283–293. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. “Beyond Speaker’s Meaning.” Croatian Journal of Philosophy 15 (2): 117–149.Google Scholar
. 2008. “A Deflationary Account of Metaphors.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. ed. by Raymond W. Gibbs, jr., 84–105. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sujay, Khandekar, Chae Won Ryu, Joseph Higgs, Jerry O. Talton, Yuanzhe Bian, and Ranjitha Kumar. 2019. “Opico: A Study of Emoji-First Communication in a Mobile Social App.” Paper presented at the Companion of the World Wide Web Conference . DOI logo
Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Vol. 21. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tolins, Jackson, and Patrawat Samermit. 2016. “Gifs as Embodied Enactments in Text-Mediated Conversation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 491: 75–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tossell, Chad C., Philip Kortum, Clayton Shepard, Laura H. Barg-Walkow, Ahmad Rahmati, and Lin Zhong. 2012. “A Longitudinal Study of Emoticon Use in Text Messaging from Smartphones.” Computer in Human Behavior 281: 659–663. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Veszelszki, Agnes. 2015. “Emoticons vs. Reaction-Gifs. Non-Verbal Communication on the Internet from the Aspects of Visuality, Verbality and Time.” In Beyond Words. Pictures, Parables, Paradoxes, Visual Learning series, vol. 5, ed. by András Benedek, and Kristóf Nyíri, 131–145. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Wharton, Tim. 2008. “‘Meaning’ and ‘Showing’: Gricean Intentions and Relevance-Theoretic Intentions.” Intercultural Pragmatics 5 (2): 131–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wharton, Tin. 2009. Pragmatics and Non-Verbal Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 1992. “On Verbal Irony.” Lingua 871: 53–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2002. “Truthfulness and Relevance.” Mind 111 (443): 583–632. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Relevance Theory.” In The Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Laurence R. Horn, and Gregory Ward, 607–632. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2012. Relevance and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Robyn Carston. 2006. “Metaphor, Relevance and the ‘Emergent Property’ Issue.” Mind & Language 21 (3): 404–433. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre. 2006. “The Pragmatics of Verbal Irony: Echo or Pretence?” Lingua 1161: 1722–1743. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Metarepresentation in linguistic communication. In Meaning and Relevance, Deidre Wilson, and Dan Sperber, 230–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. “Explaining Metonymy.” Paper presented at Institute of Humanities Research Seminar, Northumbria University, 17 March 2021.
Yus, Francisco. 2019. “Emoji: A Full Cyberpragmatic Approach.” Paper presented at the 16th China Pragmatics Conference . Nanchang, China.
. 2021. Smartphone Communication: Interactions in the App Ecosystem. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar