Functions of the Nonverbal in CMC: Emoticons and Illocutionary Force

Abstract

The term “emoticons”—short for “emotion icons”—refers to graphic signs, such as the smiley face, that often accompany computer-mediated textual communication. They are most often characterized as iconic indicators of emotion, conveyed through a communication channel that is parallel to the linguistic one. In this article, it is argued that this conception of emoticons fails to account for some of their important uses. We present a brief outline of speech act theory and use it to provide a complementary account of emoticons, according to which they also function as indicators of illocutionary force. We conclude by considering how our analysis bears upon broader questions concerning language, bodily behavior, and text.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 716 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.