A semantics of face emoji in discourse

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of face emoji (disc-shaped pictograms with stylized facial expressions) that accompany written text. We propose that there is a use of face emoji in which they comment on a target proposition expressed by the accompanying text, as opposed to making an independent contribution to discourse. Focusing on positively valenced and negatively valenced emoji (which we gloss as happy and unhappy, respectively), we argue that the emoji comment on how the target proposition bears on a contextually provided discourse value endorsed by the author. Discourse values embody what an author desires, aspires to, wishes for, or hopes for. Our analysis derives a range of non-trivial generalizations, including (i) ordering restrictions with regards to the placement of emoji and text, (ii) cases of apparent mixed emotions, and (iii) cases where the lexical content of the accompanying text influences the acceptability of a face emoji.

Flirting and winking in Tinder chats

“…Since their creation by a Japanese telecommunication company, the Unicode Consortium has helped to regulate coding practices for a set of emoji characters that can operate across a variety of technologies. In 1995 there were only 75 emoji, while in 2023 there are now 3,500 emoji with, some claim, close to 10 billion emoji sent every day (Grosz et al 2023).…”

“…A body of work is emerging that draws on Conversation Analysis (König 2019) and discursive approaches, particularly speech act theory (Skovholt, Grønning and Kankaanranta 2014;Sampietro 2016cSampietro , 2019Herring and Dainas 2017), to move away from an interest in the 'cultural use' of emoji and towards an examination of the localised sequential practices of their application. Studies have illustrated how emoji may be used for the purposes of creating 'alignment' (e.g., 👍🤝😋🥳) and 'disalignment' (e.g., ⚔🚫❌😡) between turns (Gestadnyk 2021), or, in other terminology, a positive or negative 'valance' (Grosz et al 2023), and have shown that users often treat the meaning of different emoji as interchangeable, so that 👌and 👍might mean the same thing (just as a gestural 'ok' sign or a 'thumbs up' might). The sequential placement of emoji can help users to see the specific types of interactional work that they achieve.…”

“…An emoji at the start of a turn often indexes the preceding utterance, while an emoji at the end often references the text within the turn itself (König 2019). A common focus for analysis is the use of smiley emoji (Grosz et al 2023) and their role in constructing humour and a 'play frame' . For example, scholars have shown how smiley emoji used in second turn position perform the second-part pair of a joke (Petitjean and Morel 2017;König 2019).…”

“…While it can't easily resolve the ambiguity that is extremely common in emoji use, digital Conversation Analysis can help us to make sense of it: its methods enable us to pay attention to the relationship between emoji and the surrounding textual actions, presenting candidate meanings that would not be obvious without a strong sense of the actions within which emoji sit (see also Grosz et al 2023). The multiplicity of legitimate readings that can be established for a given emoji is one reason why they are ambiguous, and this is an important finding for our growing understanding of emoji as communicative phenomena.…”

Formal Models at the Core

“…Formal models and introspective methods are now routinely applied to sign languages (Sandler & Lillo‐Martin 2006), a standard if understudied linguistic object. Within visual communication, they are increasingly applied to nonstandard objects as well, such as gestures and even emojis (Grosz et al., to appear; Schlenker, 2018). In literature, the grammatical paradigm helped analyze a literary style, “Free Indirect Discourse,” which mixes properties of direct and indirect discourse (Banfield, 1982).…”