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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
Published online: 1 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21058.sas
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