Tag Archives: gesture

December 20, 2022 · 11:32 am

Facilitating Internet Communication through Linguistic Innovations: A Final Analysis

Within the past few decades, the internet has grown exponentially as a way for people to communicate across both distance and time. Unlike a phone call, text messages and social media posts exist long after they are created. And unlike a letter in the mail, with its delay between sender and recipient, internet users can write to each other synchronously, allowing quick turnarounds in communication.

We might expect that language might shift or be adapted to better serve the users writing in this new context. Certainly, new vocabulary has been created to discuss this technology and how we use it, but new vocabulary is created with every change to technology, culture, or politics. Why would linguistic changes influenced by the internet be different than any other linguistic changes? The answer is that the internet is not only giving rise to new vocabulary, but to linguistic strategies and innovations that allow users to more successfully communicate through written text.

Limitations of Written Language

If we conceptualize written language as simply spoken language recorded visually, then by all accounts we should have no issues communicating online. But spoken language and written language are not simply the same thing in two different mediums.

Written language cannot capture many features of spoken language, such as body language, facial expression, gestures, speed, tone, and volume (Crystal 23). We can say “yeah” in a hundred different ways with a hundred shades of meaning, but when written down these shades of meaning are lost. Standard written English does allow for some variation – “Yeah. Yeah! Yeah?” – but it’s far from comprehensive. Losing these nuances inhibits how clearly we’re able to communicate with each other in an informal conversation.

User-Created Solutions

The apparent solution to our problem, then, is to find a way to encode these non-lexical cues into written language so as to avoid miscommunications and misunderstandings. And internet users have slowly been doing just that. In some cases these encoded cues directly imitate speech, while in other cases they’re disconnected from spoken speech entirely (Haas 390, 395, Izazi 30). With this in mind, it is more accurate to describe language on the internet as “writing which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech rather than as speech which has been written down” (Crystal 21).

Many of these cues help to facilitate communication by creating a sense of intimacy or familiarity between users. This is helpful, since the lack of verbal or nonverbal cues makes it difficult to establish rapport between users and to evaluate relationships between users. Establishing specific strategies to create intimacy then allows users to better evaluate whether an online correspondent is akin to a colleague, an acquaintance, or a friend. In turn, users then have some of the social context needed to determine the meaning of a message.

Most if not all of these encoded cues buck the rules of formal written language. Informality, in general, conveys a sense of intimacy; informal language becomes disrespectful when it assumes a sense of intimacy that is inappropriate for the context (Darics 145). Additionally, the sometimes opaque rules surrounding the use of these various cues can create an in-group between those who understand and use these conventions and those who do not (McCulloch 148-149). This shared in-group identity can lead to further feelings of familiarity between users.

In short, these linguistic innovations are being used both to convey non-lexical information to readers and to create a shared sense of intimacy or camaraderie between users.

Typographical Innovations

Punctuation

Nonstandard use of punctuation to influence reader interpretations of messages has been recorded in English, Malay, Russian, and Slovene-speaking online communities (Crystal 63, Izazi 28, Novikova 77, 79, Šabec 7). These nonstandard uses are simply a broadening of punctuation’s standard function in written texts: to mark the flow of speech. In addition to showing readers where to pause or stop, punctuation can also be used to indicate information about the writer’s tone or intention.

Periods may be the most infamous when it comes to punctuation being used in new, nonstandard ways. The ability to send multiple short messages rather than a single wall of text means periods are less needed as a stop between sentences. The intentional inclusion of an unnecessary period, then, indicates a sense of formality, which can be off putting in a conversation with someone the user has a fairly informal relationship with (McCulloch 113-114). On the other hand, a period in the middle of a sentence (“I would go but. I’m tired.”) is still nonstandard usage and does not carry this sense of formality. Rather, it functions to put emphasis on a certain word or to imitate a speech pattern. The reader is told how the utterance should be read and a feeling of informality or intimacy is affirmed.

Using the exclamation mark in standard fashion, meanwhile, won’t send the wrong message to a reader. But in addition to its function of expressing excitement or emphasis, it is also used online to indicate warmth and sincerity; to be excited is to be sincere, after all (McCulloch 123-124).

Other punctuation marks have also found new uses as markers of emphasis or tone. Ellipses (…) mark an author trailing off, while some users include a tilde (~) to mark sarcastic comments (McCulloch 112-113, 137). Asterisks (*), hashtags (#), and underscores (_) can emphasize text in both English and Russian-speaking contexts (Crystal 64, McCulloch 130, Novikova 71). Carrots (< >) and slashes (/) can be used to explicitly mark tone without including it in the main body of a message, as with “<sarcasm>” or “/rant” (McCulloch 127). Although functions may differ slightly, we can see that these punctuation marks are used to provide the reader with information about the writer’s intentions, what they deem important, or their tone.

Text Manipulation

Text manipulation (bolding, italics, underlining, color, size, etc) is often less accessible to online users. But that is not to say text manipulation is never used to convey non-lexical information. Russian users, for example, have used strikethrough text as a way to express their opinions while acknowledging these opinions are contrary to common societal views (Novikova 71). Strikethrough text is used for sections of opinions which are controversial, and users follow these sections with a milder form of the opinion. In the example “did the ~~police~~ readers recognize you…?” the user expresses self awareness of how ‘police’ might be reframed by other people as ‘readers’ (71). The author is thus able to express their opinion while acknowledging this opinion is controversial or otherwise not agreed upon. Although this does not perfectly reflect spoken speech, where such a sentiment might be conveyed through tone, an eye roll, or a gesture, the strikethrough text is able to perform the same discursive function.

Spelling

Abbreviations, shortened words, and other nonstandard spellings seem to be fairly common, having been found in data from Arabic, English, Malay, and Russian-speaking users (Fenianos 68, Haas 386, Izazi 22, Novikova 72). These spellings may be used to indicate informality, to cut down on keystrokes, or to “suggest pronunciation or…to draw attention to associations between…ways of pronouncing words and certain regional and cultural dialects” (Haas 386).

Nonstandard spelling can also serve other uses; for example, English, Malay, and Russian-speaking users can use full capitalization or lengthened words with repeated letters to convey both emotion and emphasis (Crystal 63, Darics 142-143, Izazi 25, 27-28, McCulloch 115, Novikova 71). Meanwhile, Malay users misspell words to create a sense of playfulness; since Malay spelling is phonetic, these misspelled words invoke humorous sounding pronunciations (Izazi 26).

Arabic-speaking users, meanwhile, can take nonstandard spelling a step further by using Arabizi, an informal way of writing Arabic with the Latin alphabet (Davies 75-76). There are no standard spellings in this user-created system (Vavichkina 204). Arabizi users in Morocco have expressed hesitation around using it with older people or peers whom they don’t know well. This suggests that the informality of Arabizi also carries a sense of intimacy or familiarity that would be impolite or uncomfortable to impose on strangers (Davies 76).

Word Choice

In addition to choices of how to type, users must also decide what to type.

Sound words (like ‘haha’ to indicate laughter) are used by both English and Malay-speaking users to convey action or emotion to readers (Izazi 23, Tagliamonte 15). These sound words can express genuine amusement or be used in more sarcastic or ironic manners; in either case, they allow users to replicate an aspect of spoken language (or, more precisely, the function of those aspects) (Izazi 24).

Some words convey emotion in a way that is much more disjointed from spoken language. One of these, the keysmash, is a nonsensical string of letters that serves as an expression of an emotion like excitement, shock, or confusion (Izazi 25). Unlike ‘haha’, ‘adjlklfojfl’ or the like is not meant to be an actual transcription of a sound people are making. Rather, the chaotic and disjointed visual of the keysmash refects the messiness of the emotion being conveyed. Alternatively, as the name suggests, the emotion being conveyed is so overwhelming that the sender could not focus enough on the keyboard to type out a lexically meaningful message.

Other words may communicate very little information. Response tokens, for instance, are filler messages or phatic words or phrases (‘lol’, ‘wow’) that appear fairly frequently in samples of text-messages (Fenianos 68-69, Haas 392, 395, Tagliamonte 15-16). Response tokens do not communicate new information, but simply acknowledge or display interest in messages sent by other participants in the conversation. The back and forth of a conversation can thereby be sustained.

Linguistic Identities

Language choice can also express identity, and in turn establish intimacy through a shared identity. Accents, after all, are clearly apparent in a face to face conversation and can allow speakers to quickly identify whether the speaker is part of a linguistic in-group or not. The use of a specific language or a change in spelling marks the user as bring from a specific geographic location and similarly allows them to find other individuals who speak their language or dialect (Ferguson 132, 138, 140). In turn, users develop a sense of intimacy based on their shared linguistic and regional identity (147).

For example, speakers of dialects from Northern England may choose to specifically encode features of their spoken speech into their tweets to assert their linguistic/regional identity (Nini 286-287). In one sample of tweets from Northern England, “clear geographical patterns” were detected for most of the dialectal spellings, despite these spellings being fairly infrequent (276). The overall infrequency of the spelling variants suggests that users who do use these variants are choosing to use them intentionally.

Similarly, some Malay Twitter users use English as the primary language in their tweets but still may include makan, a Malay word used in informal greetings (Izazi 21). Makan is not being used because it has no English translation, but because it is tied to Malay identity for members of that linguistic in-group (31).

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Moroccan users of Arabizi only use it with other Moroccans, thus making it an inherent marker of Moroccan identity whose usage indicates a shared context with the reader (Davies 76). Similarly, Saudi youth have been found to view Arabizi as “a strong marker of Arab youth identity and group solidarity” (Vavichkina 199).

Sakha Spelling

The choice to use Sakha, a language spoken in northeastern Russia, is itself an assertion of ethnic and linguistic identity, since many Sakha speakers are bilingual in Russian due to generations of attempted assimilation (Ferguson 134, 143). But some speakers of Sakha are also using nonstandard spellings online to indicate their particular dialectal identity (131, 134-135). Specifically, some dialects of Sakha will pronounce a word-initial ‘s’ as ‘h’ when it is following a word that ends with a vowel, so speakers of these dialects will spell words with an initial ‘h’ rather than an initial ‘s’. The Sakha ‘h’ is not present in Russian phonology, so this change in spelling also lets writers further distance themselves from the Russian language (141). This is also evidenced by the fact that some users will overcorrect their writing, using word-inital ‘h’ in place of ‘s’ where it would not actually occur in spoken speech (141). So, although on the surface the ‘h’ spellings are meant to imitate spoken speech, in actuality they function more as markers of ethnic and linguistic identity.

But this spelling change is not used by all Sakha-speaking users. Not all dialects of Sakha include the ‘s’ to ‘h’ change, and its use in writing is not sanctioned by any official Sakha language groups (140). As a result, Sakha speakers without this dialectal difference may view these users as seeking their own unique identity rather than participating in a unified Sakha identity, which can lead to conflict (139). Ultimately, users must decide whether the potential intimacy with other speakers of their dialect is worth the bad feelings that might arise with other speakers outside of the dialect.

Emoji and Emoticon

Emoji and emoticons have been adopted as another means of clarifying communication in synchronous conversations for users writing in languages as different as English, Arabic, and Chinese (Dresner 261, Haas 396, McCulloch 188). They can allow writers to convey their intentions, body language, or add context to the written message. This additional information helps guide readers to the writer’s intended meaning, thus creating a sense of intimacy between the sender and receiver. (Al-Rashdi 125).

The Emotion Function

On the most basic level, we could say that these symbols represent facial expressions, and thus emotion (Dresner 250). So, writers are then able to convey emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, or disgust to their readers (Al Rashdi 119). However, the “emoticon = emotion” reading doesn’t explain some uses of emoji or emoticon, like in “Stayed up all night working, I’m so tired right now :)”, which indicates that although emoji and emoticon may at times serve to convey emotion, this is not their only function.

The Intention Function

We can explain the above problematic example by recognizing that another function of emoji and emoticon is to convey a sender’s intentions (Al-Rashdi 120, Dresner 255-256). This is reflected by how the earliest emoticon, :-), was first used in 1982 to mark statements of humor (McCulloch 178). Over time, this emoticon would also come to be used as a marker of general positive sentiment or sincerity (178).

This early usage indicates that emoticons can be used to make utterances less threatening or serious (Dresner 258). This is further illustrated by emoticons like the winking face, which, as in spoken conversation, can indicate some insincerity on behalf of the speaker, as with “I’m blaming you ;)” in contrast to “I’m blaming you”.

Emoji are also used to clarify intentions in non-English contexts, such as with the example of “doge”, an emoji depicting a shiba inu which is popular on Chinese social media site Weibo (Xiong 653). It can be used to indicate humor or irony, despite the emoji itself not having a clear visual connection to either (654). The emoji not only clarifies a writer’s intentions (ie, joking) but also changes the meaning of the message by indicating it is on some level insincere. Users will also add doge to messages to indicate that they are uninterested in debating a topic further, accompanied by the phrase “doge save my life” (655). Again, the combination of emoji and text clarifies the user’s intentions to state their opinion, and not to initiate an argument. Doge can be used not only to avoid conflict, but to soften it; accompanying an opinionated message with doge indicates the message is being sent in good faith, thus minimizing the possibility of the message being interpreted as aggressive (655).

In general, doge is being used to indicate a kind of good-faith playfulness between users, although the exact meaning conveyed by the emoji depends on the specific context it appears in (657). Thus, as with other emoji and emoticons, it serves to facilitate communication between users by conveying their intentions and downplaying potentially threatening utterances.

The Gestural Function

Several authors have suggested that emoji and emoticon function as replacements for the gestures we use in face to face conversation (Dresner 260, Logi 4, McCulloch 157). Using this approach, we can categorize emoji in the same way we categorize gestures: as either emblems or illustrative (McCulloch 161-162, 166).

Emblem gestures have a fixed form and meaning (161-162). A thumbs up or down, the middle finger, and the ok symbol have a fixed form and standard meaning. These examples also all happen to have corresponding emoji, which can be used to symbolize these gestures in a written message (Al-Rashdi 122-123). The various flag emojis could also be called emblems, since they are representing a country or identity and their meaning doesn’t change in different contexts; people aren’t using a thumbs up to point to a previous message or using the Canadian flag to represent maple trees. Emblem emojis can also be repeated, representing a repeated or drawn-out action. Multiple thumbs-up could represent emphatic agreement or holding a thumbs-up for an extended period of time, while multiple kissing face emojis could symbolize blowing multiple kisses (McCulloch 171).

Illustrative emoji represent illustrative or co-speech gestures, which lack a fixed form or meaning and are used to support and reinforce speech (166). These are the undefined gestures we use to indicate size, place, direction of movement, and so on in our everyday conversations. Illustrative emoji do the same thing by reinforcing the subject and mood of a sentence; “Happy birthday!” becomes more celebratory when paired with the balloon emoji, cake emoji and present emoji, for example (Al-Rashdi 121, McCulloch 167). Unlike emblem emoji, the cake emoji or present emoji sent on its own or with different text would not necessarily convey the same celebratory tone (Logi 5). Illustrative emoji can also be used as response tokens to signify that the other participant is reading the conversation and continues to be interested in it, similarly to how eye contact, a nod, or a “hmm” might be used in spoken conversations to show active listening (Al-Rashdi 122, McCulloch 189).

Contextual Functions

In addition to conveying emotion, clarifying a user’s intentions, or appearing alongside words or phrases to reinforce their literal meaning, emoji can also be used to add additional contextual information to a message. This could be related to how a message is delivered, like pairing text with a microphone emoji to indicate a sense of loudness (Al-Rashdi 120). But they can also be used to give information about the referent or situation being discussed. The message “Me & my worst frenemy” paired with a heart emoji indicates a specific affectionate attitude towards the referent (‘frenemy’) that we could not necessarily obtain from just the text or emoji on their own (Logi 19). In a similar vein, the message “I can see how ‘interested’ everyone is” gains additional meaning if it is paired with a cellphone, indicating that the mentioned disinterest involves people being distracted on their phones (18). Unlike the illustrative emoji mentioned above, these emoji are not reinforcing speech so much as contextualizing it; without the emoji, readers would come away with different interpretations of the text.

Syntactic Innovations

Some nonstandard syntax is being used online as a way to create intimacy between users. These structures play with the expectations of what interpersonal communication should look like by blurring the line between public and private expressions. Public expressions communicate something for a listener or audience (“I am in my room”), while private expressions are simply expressions of the speaker’s subjective experience (“in room”) (Kanetani 3). By making increased usage of private expressions, users invite their audience to adopt their perspective in order to fully understand the message they’re intending to convey (20).

These structures serve different purposes within sentences, from connecting cause and effect to making requests or expressing wishes. However, they all seem to be performing the same function within a larger discourse: creating intimacy between the author and their audience by inviting the audience into the author’s mind, thereby bridging both a gap in comprehension and a gap of literal distance between users (De Benito 32, Kanetani 22).

Because-X

Because-x is a nonstandard use of ‘because’ which allows it to directly precede interjections, bare nouns, adjectives, and verbs (Okada 719-720). This can be illustrated in examples like “I’m studying because test” or “He agreed because yeah”.

In standard use, ‘because’ links two clauses that describe an effect and that effect’s cause respectively (724). In “she went for a walk because the weather was nice,” the nice weather is the cause and going for a walk is the effect. We could also word this “she went for a walk because of the nice weather”, where we use ‘because of’ since our second clause is simply a noun phrase and lacks verbs.

However, with because-x we can say “she went for a walk because weather” without using ‘of’, even though x (“weather”) is a noun phrase. We also see that “weather” is a bare noun; it has no determiners or adjectives attached to it (720). Why can we do this?

Kanetani argues that x allows for bare nouns and other categories of words because x is functioning as a private expression within the larger public expression of the complete sentence (3, 8). X doesn’t need to be specified with determiners or conjugation because the writer already knows what and who they are referring to.

We can only understand the meaning of x by adopting the writer’s perspective and experience. Additionally, this private expression we are interpreting exists within a larger public expression; we know that we are meant to see this and we aren’t intruding on someone’s private thoughts. The author, by using this structure, is assuming that a reader can figure out what they’re intending to communicate (22). So the writer is creating a sense of intimacy both by using a private expression and by establishing they trust that the reader can correctly interpret the writer’s message.

X-siro+kudasai

X-siro+kudasai is an emerging syntactic structure among Japanese forum users (Naya 65). Kudasai is a Japanese politeness marker, somewhat equivalent to English ‘please’, and in standard Japanese follows verbs ending in -te (63). In X-siro+kudasai, kudasai follows the imperative (used to command or to order) form of a verb (-siro being the imperative ending). This creates a contrast between the polite kudasai and the more impolite imperative verbs.

The structure itself is used to express indirect requests (65-66). Making requests is not something new – there are two ways to express requests in standard Japanese – but the standard request structures carry a sense of formality (67). Users decided these standard structures would be too formal for conversations on these online forums; since there is a sense of camaraderie between the users, writing formally would orient the author as more of an outsider (69). But using only the imperative form would feel rude. Users making requests didn’t want to make demands of someone who couldn’t fulfill their request; furthermore, imperative forms would again disrupt the camaraderie between users since they carry a connotation of authority or dominance (70). X-siro+kudasai acts as a compromise to avoid rudeness while maintaining the informal nature of the situation (69).

The x in this structure, like the x of because-x, also functions as a private expression which “expresses the mental state of the writer”, while the addition of kudasai marks the expression as being a public expression for an audience (73). The structure as a whole serves as an expression of desire, while the request is an implied secondary meaning (73-75). In other private expressions in Japanese the imperative functions in a similar way, to express a desire or a wish rather than a command (74). Thus, it seems that the x-siro+kudasai structure is indeed another example of a private expression within a larger public expression, where readers must adopt the author’s perspective to understand the intended meaning and what interactions the author is hoping to initiate.

Ojalá

Another syntactic innovation can be seen with ojalá, a fixed Spanish expression which does not conjugate for person or tense, which roughly means “I wish” or “I hope”. It can be used on its own or can take a subordinate clause with a subjunctive verb, as in the example “Ojalá que lo del Madrid sea un mal sueño”, or “I hope that what’s happened with Real Madrid was a bad dream” (De Benito 21-22). But you could not say, for instance, “Ojalá un libro nuevo”, which would read like “I wish a new book”.

But some Spanish Twitter users have started saying using the expression in that manner, as in the examples “Ojalá unas terceras elecciones”, ‘I wish [for] third eleccions’, and “Ojalá estar viajando constantemente”, ‘I wish [I] were constantly traveling’ (22-23).

Interestingly, we can explain some of these examples by viewing them as public or private utterances. A sentence like “Ojalá encerrada con Aston Kutcher en un ascensor”, “I wish [I were] locked with Ashton Kutcher in an elevator”, drops an explicit subject (27). Although ojalá takes a clause without any explicit subject, users successfully interpreted this message to mean the speaker wished they themself were locked in an elevator (28). As in because-x, the author does not need to specify a subject because this is a private expression expressing their own desires. Ojalá, then, may be acting similarly to kudasai in x-siro+kudasai, and making this private expression public. However, this explanation does not explain every nonstandard instance of ojalá, so further research and analysis is needed.

Final Thoughts

Although we recognize that online communities are excellent places to discover emerging vocabulary or grammatical errors, what has been overlooked is the pragmatic aspect of language on the internet, and how users are adapting standard linguistic features and creating new linguistic strategies to communicate more clearly with one another. As shown in the examples here, they have taken the formal and disembodied varieties of their respective languages and adapted them to convey all those verbal and nonverbal cues we find in spoken language: emotion, emphasis, tone, gesture, regional identity, feelings of familiarity, and more.

There is still plenty of research left to be done on this subject, especially with linguistic communities who speak languages other than English. But I hope that we are now beginning to move past lists of abbreviations found in text messages and tweets and towards deeper analyses of why people are making these linguistic choices and how these choices impact and function within a larger discourse.

References

Al Rashdi, Fathiya. “Functions of emojis in WhatsApp interaction among Omanis”, Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 26, no. 1, 2018, pp. 117-126, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.07.001. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=801579.

Darics, Erika. “Non-verbal signalling in digital discourse: The case of letter repetition.” Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 2, no. 3, 2013, pp. 141-148, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.07.002. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Davies, Eirlys. “Colloquial Moroccan Arabic: Shifts in Usage and Attitudes in the Era of Computer-Mediated Communication.” Language, Politics and Society in the Middle East: Essays in Honour of Yasir Suleiman, edited by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2018, pp. 69–89. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1tqxb42.10.

De Benito Moreno, Carlota. “‘The Spanish of the Internet’: Is That a Thing?: Discursive and Morphosyntactic Innovations in Computer Mediated Communication.” English and Spanish: World Languages in Interaction, edited by Danae Perez et al., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, pp. 258–286.

Dresner, Eli, and Herring, Susan C. “Functions of the Nonverbal in CMC: Emoticons and Illocutionary Force.” Communication Theory, vol. 20, no. 3, 2010, pp. 249-268. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01362.x. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Fenianos, Christelle Frangieh. “Internet Language: An Investigation into the Features of Textisms in an ESL/EFL Context.” Journal of Arts and Humanities, vol. 9, no. 2, 2020, pp. 63-74. https://theartsjournal.org/index.php/site/article/view/1848/835. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Ferguson, Jenanne. “Don’t Write It With ‘h’! Standardization, Responsibility and Territorialization When Writing Sakha Online.” Responsibility and Language Practices in Place, edited by Laura Siragusa and Jenanne K. Ferguson, vol. 5, Finnish Literature Society, 2020, pp. 131–52, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv199tdgh.10. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Haas, Christina, et al. “Young People’s Everyday Literacies: The Language Features of Instant Messaging.” Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 45, no. 4, 2011, pp. 378–404. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23050580. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Izazi, Zulkifli Zulfati, and Tengku Mahadi Tengku-Sepora. “Slangs on Social Media: Variations among Malay Language Users on Twitter.” Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, vol. 28, no. 1, 2020, pp. 17-34. http://www.pertanika.upm.edu.my/resources/files/Pertanika%20PAPERS/JSSH%20Vol.%2028%20(1)%20Mar.%202020/02%20JSSH(S)-1239-2019.pdf. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Kanetani, Masaru. “A grammatico-pragmatic analysis of the because X construction: Private expression within public expression.” F1000Research, vol. 10, 28 Feb. 2022, doi:10.12688/f1000research.72971.2. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Logi, Lorenzo, and Michele Zappavigna. “A Social Semiotic Perspective on Emoji: How Emoji and Language Interact to Make Meaning in Digital Messages.” New Media & Society, Sept. 2021, doi:14614448211032965. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet : Understanding the New Rules of Language. Riverhead Books, 2019.

Naya, Ryohei. “An Innovative Use of Kudasai in Social Networking Services.”Annals of “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University: Linguistics, Literature and Methodology of Teaching, vol. 17, no. 1, 2017, pp. 62–78. https://aflls.ucdc.ro/doc/Analele%20LLS%20nr.%201-2017.pdf#page=62. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Nini, Andrea, et al. “The Graphical Representation of Phonological Dialect Features of the North of England on Social Media.” Dialect Writing and the North of England, edited by Patrick Honeybone and Warren Maguire, Edinburgh University Press, 2020, pp. 266–96, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctv182jrdf.16. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Novikova, Olga, et al. “Linguistic Analysis of Insta, Twit Posts and LJ Blogs in the Context of Their Functions (Based on the Russian Language).” International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, vol. 15, no. 5, May 2021, pp. 66–86, doi:10.3991/ijim.v15i05.20013. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Okada, Sadayuki. “Category-Free Complement Selection in Causal Adjunct Phrases.” English Language and Linguistics, vol. 25, no. 4, 2021, pp. 719–741, doi:10.1017/S1360674320000295. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Šabec, Nada. “Slovene-English Netspeak: Linguistic and socio-cultural aspects.” 2009.

Tagliamonte, Sali A. “So Sick or so Cool? The Language of Youth on the Internet.” Language in Society, vol. 45, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43904632. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Vavichkina, Tatiana, Yulia Vlasova, and Elena Paymakova. “Present and Future of the Arabic Language Transliteration on the Internet (linguistic features of Arabizi).” Linguistica Antverpensia, 2021, pp. 195-213, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358146218_Present_and_Future_of_the_Arabic_Language_Transliteration_on_the_Internet_linguistic_features_of_Arabizi. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Xiong, Simin. “Pragmatic Function of the “Doge” Emoji on Weibo.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, vol. 637, 2022, https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220131.120. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Supplemental: Conveying Non-Verbal Information Online

We have previously seen how different expressive features can help users to convey meaning in a message – be it literal meaning, tone or emphasis. But as we learned, emojis can help to express non-verbal information like facial expressions or gesture. But are emojis used in non-English contexts? Furthermore – are they being used in languages who are far removed from English in terms of language family and script? And are there other ways for people to convey non-verbal information in online contexts?

Emoji in a Chinese-speaking Context

To answer the first question: yes, emoji are being used in non-English contexts. Let’s take the example of the “doge” emoji, a popular emoji on Chinese social media site Weibo (Xiong 653). The “doge” emoji, likely inspired by the older “doge” internet meme, depicts a shiba inu looking sideways. This one little picture can be used in several different ways.

Firstly, doge can be used to indicate humor. Unlike laughing face emoji, the doge emoji does not look particularly amused. But users have collectively decided that the presence of the doge emoji is a visual marker that the accompanying text is making a joke (654). In a similar vein, users will add doge to messages where they are expressing irony (654). So this emoji is not only used to clarify a writer’s intentions (ie, joking) but also to change the meaning of the message by indicating they are not speaking sincerely.

Adding on to this broad function of doge as being able to downplay utterances, users will also add doge to messages to indicate that they are uninterested in debating a topic further (655). This will often also be accompanied by the lexical phrase “doge save my life”. I find this usage interesting because I believe it’s the first example we’ve seen of an emoji being used to head off or prevent further communication with the writer. But, at the same time it could also be considered a variation of the clarification function. The writer is using doge to clarify their intentions as simply wanting to state their opinion, not to initiate an argument. Doge can be used not only to avoid conflict, but to soften it. Users disagreeing on which pudding they think tastes best can add the doge emoji to their messages to indicate their good faith intentions, and thus minimizing the possibility of their message coming across as aggressive (655).

The example of doge shows us that emoji not only exist in non-English contexts, but seem to have similar functions to many English emoji. Far from being simply illustrative or having a narrow fixed meaning, doge’s meaning and exact purpose differ depending on context (657). But, crucially, these various functions help to facilitate communication between users by conveying intention and downplaying potentially threatening utterances. We can say, in general, that doge is being used to indicate a kind of good-faith playfulness between users. This kind of feeling would be accessible to people when they are speaking face to face, but is lost when the conversation is reduced to writing. The addition of doge helps to reestablish such an atmosphere for users.

Emoji in an Arabic-Speaking Context

Emoji are also being used by Arabic-speakers for a variety of functions. Al Rashdi’s 2018 study looks specifically at two WhatsApp groups being used by Omani Arabic speakers, which resulted in a sample of 42,037 words and 4369 emoji (when counting duplicate emoji as one) (117-118).

The first function of emoji Al Rashdi describes is the indication of emotion (119). Group participants used faces with various expressions to indicate their happiness, sadness, or frustration in relation to the written messages they were sending. This function is also found in English emoji usage.

Beyond indicating emotion, emoji could also be used to contextualize a message (120). Writers added emoji to their messages to clarify their intentions and make messages less threatening and more playful (20). One user, when pointing out another user’s grammatical errors, adding a emoji blowing a kiss to his message to clarify that he was not criticizing the other user so much as teasing him. This aligns with Herring’s analysis of emoticon, as discussed in Week 6. Emoji could also contextualize a message by illustrating volume via the use of the megaphone emoji (120). This specific use is infrequent in English, which may be explained by the fact that Arabic does not have capital/lower-case letters. Capitalization can be used by English-speaking users to indicate loudness, but Arabic-speaking users would need to find an alternative.

Emoji can also carry a sense of action or gesture. In the context of a WhatsApp group welcoming a new member, a string of confetti emoji can act as a replacement for the excitement, enthusiasm or physical actions (hugs, handshakes, approaching the new member, applause, etc) that might take place in a similar situation in real life (121). More concrete gestures, like the thumbs-up/down to express approval or disapproval, can also be shown through emoji (122). Emoji can also be used to signal the opening or closing of a conversation via a waving emoji or a face blowing a kiss, both of which are literal depictions of gestures used in spoken conversation to greet or say goodbye to a person (123).

Users may also send emoji as a way to signal their actions or their presence in a conversation. In a spoken conversation we are aware of who our conversational partners are and whether they’re paying attention to what we’re saying. When communicating online we have no way of knowing whether someone is viewing the conversation while we are, and whether someone has seen a message and is choosing not to respond. At the same time, a person may not always have something they want to add to the conversation. Emoji are a happy medium by which a person can signal they have seen a message. Some of the studied users sent emoji as a way to respond to thanks or compliments, in the same way that a wordless smile or a nod might be used in spoken conversations (122). For the Omani users, emoji could be used to indicate that a group member had seen a message and followed what it had said (in this example, it was a challenge/request to repeat a certain prayer) (124). In these cases, the emoji themselves may not carry any meaning linked to their appearance. The sunflower emoji the Omani users sent to affirm they had completed the prayer challenge could have been replaced with any other emoji without changing the meaning (so long as the other group members were in agreement on the choice of emoji).

The functions of emojis in this Omani sample seem to be similar to the ones we have seen for English and Chinese emoji. They often seem to be used to communicate non-verbal information such as facial expression and emotion, intention, gesture, or even simply presence. The motivation for using emoji, then, is likely the same as for other linguistic communities: it helps bridge the information gap between spoken conversation and written communication, as well as creating a sense of camaraderie, involvement, or intimacy between group members (125).

Letter Repetition: Another Way to Convey Emotion

We’re moving back to English for this last piece. Specifically, we’re taking a more in depth look at letter repetition, to show that emoji are not the only way we can convey non-verbal information to one another.

Non-verbal cues like emoji and letter repetition are context dependent; their meaning is shaped by what has previously occurred in the exchange and what text or other media they are accompanying (Darics 142). Something like letter repetition is recognized as signaling something, but that something is not fixed (142). Gestures, body movement, and facial expression are also context-dependent and have their meaning shaped by the speech they accompany, so it’s not unreasonable to say that letter repetition could carry extralinguistic information in the same way those embodied signals do (143).

What exactly counts as ‘context’? Context, according to Darics, can be defined from two perspectives. The first is that context is created via interaction, and the second is that context is “a set of a priori conditions that affect interactions” (143). In this case, these ‘a priori conditions’ are things like environmental factors or societal knowledge; things that people already have knowledge of when they enter into a conversation with another person (143). So we determine the meaning of a context-dependent factor by drawing on both our knowledge of what has been established in the interaction and our wider knowledge of the socio-cultural meanings such context-dependent factors might carry.

Letter repetition, as we’ve previously discussed, is an expression of non-standard orthography; it’s a way of writing that doesn’t conform to agreed-upon formal standards of writing (144). Traditionally, researchers have approached letter repetition as if it has a direct link to oral language; repeated letters indicate a drawn out pronunciation of those letters (144). But, as we’ve noted in previous posts, some repeated letters are physically impossible to pronounce, as with plosive consonants like ‘bbbbbbb’ or silent letters like the ‘e’ in ‘cuteeeeeee’. Thus, we must conclude that letter repetitions “do not necessarily correlate with the stress or elongation of the spoken versions of manipulated words” (144). Rather, we can now approach repetition through the function it is playing during interactions.

Letter repetition seems to carry an element of “emotional involvement of affect” (145). Take, for instance, an interaction between two users who work together in which one is says she is excited about a new template she created, because now “every[th]ing should take alllllllllllllllloooooooooooootttttt less time” (144). The repetition emphasizes ‘a lot’ in the phrase “take a lot less time”, which we know from context is why she is excited about this new template. Thus, the repetition further expresses her excitement by emphasizing the cause for excitement. Darics agrees, saying the repetition is acting as “an aid for conversational partners about how the verbal messages should be interpreted” (145).

Repetition, as a non-standard element, also invokes a sense of informality. Use of repetition, then, can indicate a desire for a less formal interaction, thus creating feelings of intimacy (145). In some cases, only one participant in an interaction may use repetition (145). In Darics’ example of a conversation between a boss and an employee, the boss uses letter repetition while the employee does not, maintaining a more formal writing style. Here, the boss’ use of repetition allows her to come across as less formal and therefore less threatening to her employee. At the same time, the employee is not downplaying her messages with informal elements like repetition. These two people are then able to invoke (although perhaps not create) a more equal relationship than they have in reality. This reflects work dynamics we may see in real life, where a boss may use a friendly tone or joke around in order to bridge the power gap between them and their employees. The boss/employee conversation further emphasizes to us the importance of viewing repetition in context; what looks like a mismatch of style is actually informed by the power dynamics between these individuals outside of their online communication.

The invocation of informality and subsequent creation of intimacy via letter repetition appears to be a feature shared across the examples provided by Darics. So, although repetition may be used for slightly different purposes within different contexts, it does appear to be used to convey non-verbal information that users would obtain through embodied actions in a face to face conversation. However, Darics notes further study will be needed to better understand all the reasons users may choose to use repetition and what effects it has on interpersonal conversations.

Conclusion

These three pieces illustrate that English-speaking users are not the only ones trying to convey non-verbal information in their online conversations. More than that, using emoji for this function appears to be true across these three very different languages with very different scripts. But what English, Chinese, and Arabic have in common is that their written form cannot, on its own, capture the intricacies and nuances inherent to spoken speech. All three linguistic communities, then, need to find ways to convey these nuances in order to communicate successfully – and as we have seen, they have indeed found some (imperfect) ways to do so.

References

Al Rashdi, Fathiya. “Functions of emojis in WhatsApp interaction among Omanis”, Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 26, no. 1, 2018, pp. 117-126, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.07.001.

Xiong, Simin. “Pragmatic Function of the “Doge” Emoji on Weibo.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, vol. 637, 2022, https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220131.120.

Week 6: Emoji and Emoticon

Emoji and emoticon: the fun and playful little pictures you can add to text messages. But that’s not all they are. As it turns out, these little pictures can be used to convey additional meaning and may actually be fulfilling an important function within digital communications.

Emoji and Emoticons – What’s the Difference?

Although the two terms look like they should be interchangeable, emoji and emoticon actually are different things.

Emoticon is a portmanteau of ‘emotion’ and ‘icon’ (McCulloch 178.) They are the little pictures we make by combining keyboard symbols – things like 🙂 and 🙁 and <3, to type a few. They first arose in 1982 on Carnegie Mellon University’s computer message system (177). Emoticons allowed users to integrate these little icons into their texts, as opposed to having a picture attached to the end of a post.

Emoji originated in Japan in the late 1990s, and the term is a combination of ‘e’, picture, and ‘moji’, character (180). These are the premade illustrations that people often add to texts – things like a thumbs up, a tree, a laughing face, and so on.

Emoji were actually preceded in Japan by kaomoji, which were more similar to American emoticons in that they used keyboard symbols to make faces or pictures (179). The ‘kao’ in kaomoji means face. Unlike American emoticons and their sideways faces, kaomoji tended to be face on: 0.o and ^_^ are two examples.

But what’s interesting is that we have emoticon and kaomoji developing around the same time in two separate environments (although the two would come into contact later, leading some American users to use both kaomoji and emoticon). This could be a coincidence, or it could suggest that both were fulfilling some communication need that users had.

Where do Emoji & Emoticons show up?

Emoji & emoticon tend to appear in synchronous contexts, like texts or instant messages, rather than in more asynchronous contexts like emails or blogs (Herring 261). They also show up less often in conversations that are more serious or work-focused, suggesting that they may carry a sense of informality, light-heartedness, or playfulness (259, 261). With these context, we can guess that their function is likely related to the needs of speech-like interpersonal writing. Within a conversation itself, they’re more likely to appear at the end of sentences or utterances than mid-thought. They can appear paired with text or by themselves.

Analyzing Emoji & Emoticon

There are several ways we can approach emoji and emoticon. On the most basic level, they seem to represent facial expressions. Early researchers took this to mean that emoji and emoticon illustrate emotion. Hence, by using emoticon or emoji, we’re conveying information about our emotions that would otherwise be unavailable to our audience (250). However, the “emoticon = emotion” reading breaks down when we examine it further. The 😛 face or 😉 face, for instance, represent facial expressions but don’t represent specific emotions (252). Furthermore, emoticon are sometimes used in contexts where the content of its surrounding text don’t necessarily match the emotion of the face – like in “Stayed up all night working, I’m so tired right now :)”. So to get to the bottom of what these little faces and pictures are doing, we’ll have to look into more complex explanations.

Some people have described emoji as their own language. But this is clearly not true, since we cannot communicate solely in emoji (McCulloch 157-158). This is for two reasons. First, emoji do not always have singular, fixed meanings, but can have their meaning shaped by the text surrounding them and vice versa (Logi 5). As such, emoji become less and less intelligible as they are disconnected from language (4). Secondly, emoji and emoticon are very bad at illustrating abstract concepts; things like tense, mental faculties, and so on. They also don’t allow us to easily specify through the use of determiners (this, that, these, etc) or proper names (New York, IKEA, etc). So if emoji and emoticon aren’t emotional icons, and they are a language, what are they?

The Illocutionary Force Approach

By returning to the first emoticons from 1982, we can see that they were assigned a specific function from the beginning. Amidst joking discussion of speculative situations at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy, 🙂 was suggested as a way to mark statements of humor so as not to confuse or concern other users (McCulloch 178). Over time, this narrow usage would expand, and 🙂 would be used as a marker of general positive sentiment or sincerity (178). So, emoticons were being used not to illustrate facial expressions, but to convey the intention of the author to readers (Herring 255-256). Herring describes emoticons as “indicators of illocutionary force”. Illocutionary acts are acts that are carried out through their being spoken: promises, threats, joking, and so on. Emoticons can clarify what sort of illocutionary act a writer is performing – a joke, a promise, a request, and so on.

If we accept that emoticon and emoji convey intention, many of their uses in context make more sense. A wink in spoken conversation denotes some double meaning or inside joke, and a winking face like 😉 can add an attitude of humor to a message (“I’m blaming you” versus “I’m blaming you ;)”). So emoticons can be used to make utterances less threatening or serious (258). Emoticons that appear by themselves function in very similar ways, and either modify previous messages or express a general sentiment (259).

This approach also gets around another issue with the emoticon = emotion hypothesis: facial expressions tend to be unconscious or unintentional, while typing is very much intentional (261). But a 🙂 in a message doesn’t feel like a forced smile, because it’s not; it’s a statement of intention (257). Although Herring focuses on emoticon, we can see how this approach can also work for emoji, seeing as how they also include pictures of facial expressions. The variety of emoji available may also allow users to further specify or clarify their intentions (for instance, a simple smiling face and a face with a wide grin might be used to indicate different amounts of humor or excitement).

The Gestural Approach

Several authors have suggested that emoji and emoticon function as replacements for the gestures we use in face to face conversation (Herring 260, Logi 4, McCulloch 157). Obviously, gestures and other body language are absent in written texts. In formal texts, this may not present much issue, as they often call for a neutral tone, disembodied from the actual writer. But if users are trying to write text that has speech-like qualities, they might want the ability to write gestures into their messages as well.

McCulloch specifically divides emoji into two categories with two different corresponding types of gesture. First there are emblematic emoji, which function like emblematic gesture (161-162). Secondly, there are more illustrative emoji that function as co-speech or illustrative gestures (166).

Emblematic gestures are those that have a fixed form and meaning. They also often can be named, as with giving a thumbs up/down, flipping someone off, the ok symbol, zipping the lips, and so on. Some emoji are also emblematic; the thumbs up/down emoji, of course, but also the eggplant (which by itself has sexual connotations) and the various flag emoji (which represent a country or identity). They have been given some intrinsic and fairly fixed meaning; people aren’t using a thumbs down as a way to point down, and they aren’t using the Canadian flag to represent maple trees. Emblematic emojis can be repeated, perhaps representing a repeated or drawn-out action. Multiple thumbs-up could represent holding a thumbs-up for a while, while multiple kissing face emojis could symbolize blowing multiple kisses (171). These fixed gestures, like emoji, are used intentionally in conversation (187).

Illustrative or co-speech gestures are much more fluid. They’re difficult to describe in writing, but we use them all the time to illustrate size, shape, direction, and so on; they reinforce and support what we’re saying (166). The same gesture could mean two different things depending on the context: swiping one’s hand could indicate direction (come here/go away), size (this big/this small), emotion (dismissiveness, surrender, excitement), and so on. Illustrative emoji do the same thing in re-inforcing the subject and perhaps adding to the mood (“Happy birthday!” versus “Happy birthday!” paired with the balloon emoji, cake emoji and present emoji) (167). They also can be used simply to signify that the other participant is reading the conversation and continues to be interested in it, similarly to how body language or meaningless vocalization might be used in spoken conversations to show active listening (189). For the most part, researchers have not found that people use long strings of illustrative emoji to tell complex stories. The vast majority of emojis, in general, appear by themselves or in short strings, and they usually appear alongside words or are short replies to previous messages (169). When illustrative emoji do appear in sets, they are usually simply repeated or placed with matching emoji (snowman/snowflake, different colored hearts, and so on) and the order they appear in doesn’t appear to change their meaning (170). Again, this points toward an illustrative/clarifying function rather than a communicative function.

The Social Semiotic Approach

Both of the aforementioned approaches focus more on the function of emoticons and emoji in a text; the social semiotic approach is a closer analysis of how they can be used to create meaning, and what sort of meanings they can create (Logi 2). Meaning is created through users’ choices and the interactions between those choices within a text (5-6). So, researchers need to consider the literal text, the literal emoji/emoticon (specifically emoji in this paper), and how those two interact to create a full meaning (6-7).

Emoji can interact with text in several ways; they can appear alongside words or phrases to reinforce their literal meaning, they can replace a word or words, or they can reinforce an attitude or judgment found in the literal text (14). In some cases, text gives emoji meaning, while emoji don’t add much to the meaning of the text. The reinforcement of literal meaning can be seen in the example of “Incheon Airport” paired with an airplane emoji (7). Additionally, this example shows us that in some cases the text assigns meaning to the emoji, while the emoji itself does not assign a meaning to its accompanying words. The airplane emoji could refer to a literal airplane, or to any number of related concepts like a pilot, flying, a trip, or an airport. When paired with the text, the user assigns the “airport” meaning to the airplane emoji (7). However, the emoji only has this fixed meaning temporarily, and later responses within the same conversation could assign it a different meaning (ie, “Hope you enjoy your trip!” paired with the airplane emoji would give the emoji the meaning of “trip” rather than the previously assigned meaning of “airport”) (14-15).

Emoji paired with text can create a number of kinds of meanings beyond reinforcing the literal meaning of a text. To further study this, Logi and other researchers collected texts from students and interviewed them about how they used emoji (8). They were then able to analyze the types of meaning created by the collected texts. Some of these categories of meaning included attitude (the user’s positive or negative feelings towards something), graduation (intensity of attitude), involvement (identification with a group) and so on (8, 11-12). Emoji, then, are definitely not limited to literal or emotional meaning only.

Emoji and text can also interact in a more collaborative way (17). The message “Me & My worst frenemy” paired with the heart emoji indicates a specific type of attitude towards the referent (‘frenemy’) that we could not obtain from just the text or emoji on their own (19). Similarly, emoji can act to add information about a situation described in text. Adding a cellphone emoji to the message “I can see how ‘interested’ everyone is” lets us know that the disinterest that the user is actually referring to likely involves people being on their phones rather than paying attention to whatever the event is (18).

In short, emoji appear to be able to support and help express a variety of different meanings within a text. In some cases they are superfluous, while at other times their inclusion clarifies or adds to the literal meaning of the surrounding text.

The Popularity of Emoji & Emoticon

Humans have liked adding images to our texts for a long time, from the illustrations on medieval manuscripts to the little doodles we add to cards or letters (McCulloch 174-175). In that sense, emoji and emoticons are simply the most recent incarnation of textual adornment. But, as shown above, emoji & emoticons are also serving to clarify communication (188). They also tend to coexist with other expressive textual features, like nonstandard spellings and letter repetition (185). So in a sense, we could say that emoji and emoticons are popular and widespread for the same reason these other expressive features are widespread: because they’re providing some layer of additional meaning that the words by themselves do not (192).

Despite the fact that they are being used for similar, if not identical, purposes, emoji and emoticon don’t seem to be in competition with each other (185). This could be due to user preference – some people just prefer the look of a 🙂 over an emoji face – or it may be due to other factors, like technological support of emoji (Herring 260). Further research would be needed to determine whether there are specific linguistic, demographic, or environmental factors that influence the choice between emoticon and emoji.