Emojis Through the
Perspectives of Politeness
and Speech Act Theories
A comparison between the functions of face
and non-face emojis
The ever-increasing popularity and use of emojis have drawn some academic attention. However, most previous research examines the functions of all kinds of emojis together and does this without theoretical grounding. The present thesis investigates whether there are any discrepancies between the functions of face and non-face emojis and explores these functions through the perspectives of Speech Act theory and Politeness theory. Data was collected from participants using emojis in written computer-mediated communication in USA. The findings suggest that not all emojis exhibit the same functions. Face emojis have not been observed establishing a tone in a message and non-face emojis did not mark humour in an utterance. However, both kinds of emojis were employed for the other functions. Further, both face and non-face emojis were used to perform locutionary acts, clear up illocutionary acts, and as illocutionary force indicating devices. The analysis has also shown that both sorts of emojis are used to mitigate face-threatening acts, and maintain both positive and negative face.
Table of contents………..… 1
1. Introduction……… 2
2. Historical Background………..………...2
3. Emoticons and Emojis………..3
3.1 Emoticons……….3
3.2 Emojis………..4
3.3 Face and non-face emojis………..7
4. Theoretical Frameworks………..8
4.1 Speech Act theory………8
4.2 Politeness theory……….11
5. Data Collection………15
6. Analysis, Discussion and Findings………..17
6.1 Text replacement………..19
6.1.1 Face and non-face emojis as text replacement………20
6.1.2 Comparison between face and non-face emojis as text replacement…………..22
6.2 Disambiguation………..…22
6.2.1 Face emojis marking humour………...23
6.2.2 Non-face emojis marking humour……….25
6.2.3 Face emojis setting the tone……….25
6.2.4 Non-face emojis setting the tone………..26
6.2.5 Comparison of face and non-face emojis disambiguating……….26
6.3 Reinforcing……….26
6.3.1 Face emojis reinforcing tone……….26
6.3.2 Non-face emojis reinforcing tone………..27
6.3.3 Face emojis reinforcing the subject matter……….28
6.3.4 Non-face emojis reinforcing the subject matter………..29
6.3.5 Comparison between face and non-face emojis reinforcing………29
6.4 Emotional expression………..29
6.4.1 Face emojis as emotional expression………..30
6.4.2 Non-face emojis as emotional expression………31
6.4.3 Comparison between face and non-face emojis as emotional expression……….31
6.5 Relationship maintenance and emphasis………..32
6.5.1 Face emojis as relationship maintenance and emphasis………32
6.5.2 Non-face emojis as relationship maintenance and emphasis……….33
6.5.3 Comparison between face and non-face emojis as relationship maintenance and emphasis………..34
7. Conclusion………..34
8. Further Research………36
9. Limitations of the Thesis………..36
10. References……….37
11. Appendix……….39
Recently, ‘emojis’ have entered our lives and changed the way we use written computer-mediated communication (CMC). Almost everyone who communicates through social media or other CMC platforms has at some point probably used an ‘emoji’ or ‘emoticon’. In fact, the popularity of these pictorial symbols has risen so high that Oxford Dictionaries declared the emoji “face with tears of
joy” word of the year 2015 (Miller et al., 2016).
Emojis are also used in numerous ways in daily life outside of CMC. They are used as a tool to receive customer feedback at, e.g., airports. On leaving the toilet area, people can state their
satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the sanitary state of the toilets by pressing a button on a machine with smiling, frowning, or mad faces. Furthermore, emojis have gained ground in other commercial sectors. McDonald's made a commercial where emojis are people living their lives and happily eating at McDonald's restaurants. Also, Sony Pictures have produced an Emoji movie in 2017 where emojis have a life and story of their own. This suggests that these companies acknowledged the popularity of emojis and tried to make financial gains out of it.
The current thesis investigates how emojis are used in private CMC, whether the use of face emojis differs from non-face emojis, and how emojis in general function through theoretical
perspectives of Politeness and Speech Act theories. In the first section, the thesis discusses the historical background of emoticons and emojis. Further, the paper discusses previously conducted academic research and their findings with its relevance to the current topic. In the third section, theoretical frameworks of Politeness theory and Speech Act theory are explained and related to emoji use. From here on, the thesis describes how the data collection process unfolded. Finally, the collected data is analyzed and discussed in one of the final sections of the paper before concluding remarks.
2. Historical Background
The emoji trend began with the emergence of emoticons in 1982, and they have been evolving ever since. Emojis are pictorial images of faces or other objects, while emoticons are created through ASCII symbols which resemble faces. A scientist at Carnegie Mellon University used the smiley face ‘:-)’ on a university forum with the intention to mark one of his posts as a joke (Dresner & Herring, 2010). Since then, many different forms of emoticons have emerged, such as the wink ‘;-)’ or the frown ‘:-(’. Emoticons started being used for different functions and since their emergence have spread through all parts of the world.
Emoticons read vertically were most commonly used in the western world, while horizontal emoticons proliferated in the eastern part of the world. Particularly in Japan, emoticons, also called
kaomojis, were created and read horizontally. The facial representations were also constructed
through the use of ASCII symbols, but looked different, as the happy face ‘(^_^)’ or the serious face ‘(-_-)’. In some of their usage, Kaomojis are similar to their western counterparts, such as the closing of phrases and clarifying mood (Markman & Oshima, 2007). However, they are constructed in a more intricate way which allows for a wider variety of features, and this makes the kaomojis better at expressing emotions and mimicking facial expressions.
Increasing demand for emoticons led to the creation of pictorial symbols named ‘emoji’. The word ‘emoji’ comes from the Japanese language, where e means picture and moji character. The traditional emoticons, which were created through ASCII symbols, were now recreated into images
of smiling yellow faces ‘ ’. In addition to face emojis, many other non-face emojis were designed,
such as vehicles ‘ ’, drinks ‘ ’, hand gestures ‘ ’, and many others. Thus, the creation of emojis provided people with a far wider variety of pictorial symbols to use than before.
Through the years the use of emojis and emoticons has spread across various CMC
platforms, and they have become natural to use. They are now used in mobile texting, social media, video games, customer service chats, and e-mails. Research also shows that emojis are used more frequently than emoticons on Twitter (Eisenstein & Pavalanathan, 2015). They are even more popular than abbreviations such as ‘OMG’ or ‘LOL’ on Instagram (Riordan 2017). Thus, the increasing popularity and use of emojis seems evident.
Within the academic world, emoji use and functions are receiving increasingly more
attention from researchers. The increasing popularity and use of emojis across different social media and CMC platforms make them a rapidly changing phenomenon which needs to be frequently reviewed to be understood. The following sections of this thesis aim to explore previous literature concerned with emojis and their functionality within CMC. Since emojis evolved out of emoticons, it is essential to understand and review past research related to emoticons to follow the development of emojis.
3. Emoticons and Emojis
3.1 Emoticons
Since the emergence of CMC chats, they lacked pragmatic features of real conversations. Means of expression which are typical for face-to-face interactions, such as tone of voice, head nods, and smiles were missing from text-based CMC (Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire, 1984). Due to the lack of these features participants of Kiesler et al. (1984) reported having trouble communicating adequately through a CMC chat, because they felt that they could not convey the intended meaning of an
utterance as well as they could in face-to-face interaction. Sarbaugh-Thompson and Feldman (1998) suggested that the lack of pragmatic features in text-based CMC makes it difficult to convey humour and sarcasm. However, with the rapid growth and increasing use of text-based CMC people have come up with a way to replicate typical features of face-to-face interaction. The emoticons were born and were quickly embraced by CMC users.
Ample academic attention has been paid to the functions and use of emoticons. Some researchers argue that through emoticons users of text-based CMC are now able to add expression and emotion to their messages (Derks et al., 2008; Walther & D’Addario, 2001). Others propose that they establish a frame for the interpretation of an utterance (Derks et al., 2008; Skovhol et al., 2014). Emoticons signal whether the utterance is intended to be playful or serious, i.e. jokes, irony, and sarcasm.
Research also shows that these ASCII symbols representing smiles and frowns are perceived as emotions by people. Yuasa et al. (2011) investigated whether reading sentences with emoticons shows any brain activity in the region concerned with processing emotions. The results showed that when presented with an emotionally-neutral sentence containing emoticons the participants showed brain activity in emotion processing. An increase in blood flow was detected in the designated brain region. Thus, there is some evidence suggesting that emoticons intended to communicate certain emotions indeed do have that effect on the reader.
Another function of emoticons is to hedge utterances such as requests, corrections, rejections, or complaints (Skovhol et al. 2014). For example, after making a request, the sender of the message could add an emoticon at the end of it to soften the demand and make it seem less imposing. Furthermore, emoticons in work-related e-mail exchanges enhance the reader’s affect in a positive manner (Gacey & Richard 2013). Participants in Gacey and Richard (2013) judged e-mails containing emoticons to be more favourable than their identical counterparts without any emoticons. However, the same participants also reported that e-mails containing emoticons were perceived as less professional. This suggests that the use of emoticons is considered to be more acceptable in informal than in formal contexts.
3.2 Emojis
Just like emoticons, the emojis are considered inappropriate in some contexts. For instance, Kaye, Wall & Malone (2016) reported that their participants thought emojis to be unsuited for usage in formal settings such as e-mails. Participants of Kaye et al. (2016) were mostly university students who claimed that they mostly sent e-mails to authority figures or professional people. Thus, they deemed emoji use in e-mails as unprofessional, which correlates with the findings of previous studies about emoticons and their use in work-related e-mails (Gacey & Richard, 2013; Skovhol et al., 2014). In
other formal contexts, such as academic essays, emojis are also considered inappropriate. According to Danesi (2017), academic papers are supposed to have a neutral and objective tone and style, so the use of emojis would make the essay seem subjective and biased. Adding particular emojis alters the interpretation of an utterance just as an adverb or adjective would do, as will become clear in the analysis part of this thesis.
Like many other cultural variations in the world, specific emoji popularity and emoji
interpretations vary across cultures and nations as well. That means that some emojis are used more often in one region of the world and are rejected in another. The ‘turd’ emoji, for example, is used significantly more often in Canada than anywhere else in the world (Danesi 2017). According to the participants of Danesi (2017), Canadians use the emoji often because, as they report it, “Things stink
a lot”. The ‘ ’ can be seen as a reflection of “the Canadian hubris based on ironic stoicism” (Danesi p. 119, 2017) which is, according to Danesi (2017), stereotypical of that country. The same emoji could be interpreted drastically different in another culture. The turd emoji might represent Western vulgarity, be an offensive statement, or be seen as a corruption of morals. Another example is the “thumbs up” emoji. In the Western world this symbol is generally considered to signal
approval, however, in some Arabic speaking regions the same symbol is offensive and could be compared to the Western “middle finger”. From Danesi (2017) it can be concluded that the interpretation of emojis is not something universal and there is a vast amount of emojis which are culturally coded. There are also other examples of most used emojis in specific regions. Residents of the United States of America in particular use the gun and pizza emojis more than anyone else, the French employ the hearts emoji a great deal, and Arabic speakers use the rose emoji most often (Danesi, 2017).
While specific emoji popularity and meaning vary across nations, the emoji images vary across different brands of devices and platforms. Unicode is the company which produces and provides the codes and the names of created emojis. However, the company does not design the actual graphic image. That is done by the CMC platforms or mobile phone brands that support Unicode emojis. This means that each emoji code created by Unicode looks different on each CMC platform or brand of mobile phone. The different renderings of emojis can be compared to different fonts of letters. The Latin capital A looks slightly different when typed with Times New Roman font (A) than with Calibri font (A). A smiling face emoji sent from for example an iPhone looks different on a Samsung device. The core idea of the emoji between the two brands is the same, but slight differences in appearance have an effect on the interpretation of the emoji (Miller et al., 2016). In
Apple device while on a Samsung device it was read as ‘blissfully happy’. Thus, the same emoji can be interpreted to have a less positive sentiment on one platform than on another and result in both miscommunication and misinterpretation.
According to Novak et al. (2015), emojis are mostly used to communicate positive sentiment. The study investigated 1.6 million tweets in 13 different European languages and looked into the emotional content of emojis. The results showed that emojis are mostly used to set a tone or establish a mood in the message and that this mood the emojis established was predominantly cheerful, happy, or positive in some other way. If the essential function of emojis is to set a tone in the utterance, then it is vital that the tone is communicated adequately. The different looking emojis across CMC platforms (Miller et al., 2016) hinder this process and result in varying interpretations of the messages when represented wrongly.
Qualitative studies have pinpointed many individual variations of emoji use. Cramer, Juan and Tetreault (2016) asked participants of their research to share their last emoji use, explain why they have chosen that specific emoji, and elaborate on the conversational context. The analysis of the collected utterances containing an emoji revealed functions such as relationship maintenance, text replacement, establishing a tone, and emotional expression. The research also showed that emojis are used as a tool to adhere to social and conversational norms. In addition to the utterance analysis, the researchers gained additional insight by asking the participants to explain their emoji use. This insight helped to identify emoji functions which otherwise might have been left
undetected. Another qualitative study investigated private WhatsApp group conversations in Oman (Fathiya, 2015, cited in Cramer et al. 2016). The study outlined many emoji functions, such as, but not limited to, showing approval or disapproval, conversational openings and endings, indicating celebration, contextual cues, and varying repetition functions. However, because Fathiya (2015) investigated emoji use within a group context, the detected emoji functions may differ from private CMC conversation just between two people.
Analysis based on self-report usage of emojis shows other interesting functions. Users of CMC tend to use emojis to mark jokes and irony, express emotion and fake emotional expression, maintain relationships, and create a shared and secret uniqueness (Kelly & Watts, 2015). The last function is achieved through re-appropriation of emojis, which attaches a different meaning to an emoji understood only by the in-group. Arguably, this function could be classified as relationship maintenance, as it is used to maintain and strengthen an existing relationship between people through the creation of a ’secret’ and ‘unique’ symbolism. Another function that stands out is the use of emojis to fake emotional expression. A participant in Kelly and Watts (2015) described using emojis to depict emotions in a conversation falsely. This was done in order to avoid causing offence
to the person on the other end, and generally, to keep the conversation positive.
Emojis are also used as a tool for expressing an aesthetic self-image and identity. Sugiyama (2015) interviewed Japanese teenagers about their emoji use and the reasons behind it. Most of the findings correlate with the conclusions drawn by previously discussed research (Cramer et al., 2016; Fathiya, 2015; Kelly & Watts, 2015). However, the use of emojis to express an aesthetic self-image has not been discussed by previous literature. According to Sugiyama (2015), Japenese teens pay close attention to the colour of the emojis which they use in a single utterance. They want the message to have a diverse array of coloured emojis which reflect the sender’s aesthetic sensibility. In addition, the participants believe that the choice of emojis also reflects their identity. Like the use of
the “grinning cat emoji’ . There is an equivalent grinning human face emoji to use in any utterance. However, some people prefer to use the cat emoji because they feel that it fits their personalities, or that it reflects their love for felines. Another example is the use of the “monkey face emoji” , as people think it reflects their attitude towards what has been said, or when people are ‘goofing around’ with ‘monkey business’. This kind of emojis are used quite frequently. According to emojitracker.com, which is a platform that tracks the real-time use of emojis on twitter, the monkey emoji was in the top 20 most used emojis on the day of accessing the website (5th of May, 2018).
3.3 Face and non-face emojis
Not all kinds of emojis might be able to fulfil the same functions. Previously discussed research has discussed all emojis in general, without separation of face and non-face emojis. The difference in appearance between face and non-face emojis could have an effect on how they function. Therefore it is essential to conduct research which pays attention to the two kinds of emojis and whether there is a difference in their functions and use.
Some academic attention has been paid to investigate whether face and non-face emojis function differently. Riordan (2017a) compared non-face emojis with face emojis and asked participants of the study to judge the positive affect that non-face emojis carry in a message. The results suggest that using non-face emojis can increase the level of positive affect perceived by the reader in an utterance. Also, just like their counterparts, non-face emojis are mostly used to communicate positive and not negative affect. However, if the words in a message convey negative emotional meaning, a non-face emoji cannot reverse that affect. Thus, it can only soften the
negativity or enhance the positivity of an utterance. In a separate study, Riordan (2017b) investigated whether non-face emojis are able to disambiguate messages. Participants judged utterances with regard to their ambiguity with and without a non-face emoji. The findings of the study indicated that
just like face emojis, symbols such as ‘ ’ syringe, ‘ ’ basketball, and ‘ ’ beer mug
disambiguate the preceding utterance. While the research findings are significant in determining the functions of non-face emojis, they exclude many other non-face emojis which are just not discussed in the study. Also, Riordan (2017b) does not look into whether non-face emojis are used in numerous other emoji functions which have been identified by previous research discussed above.
The current study seeks to compare functions of face and non-face emojis and explore them, considering the limited research about the differences between face and non-face emojis. The lack of investigation into non-face emojis specifically, has left many questions unanswered with regard to their roles. For the current thesis, CMC user-generated data of both face and non-face emojis was collected, analyzed and compared in their use through the perspectives of Speech Act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle 1969, 1979; Searle & Vanderveken, 1985) and Politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1978). The research questions the study is concerned with are as following:
1. Do non-face emojis perform the same functions as face emojis in written CMC?
2. How are emojis used through the perspectives of Speech Act theory and Politeness theory? The first question focuses on discovering any discrepancies between the functions of face and non-face emojis. The second question aims to explore emoji use in written CMC through the theoretical perspectives of Speech Act theory and Politeness theory.
4. Theoretical Frameworks
In order to answer the second research question, an elaborate explanation of the theories is required. The following sections aim to clarify Speech Act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969, 1979; Searle & Vanderveken, 1985) and Politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1978). Further, after explaining the referred to theories, section 4 points out how emojis can be used to perform speech acts and also how they are employed to show politeness.
4.1 Speech Act theory
Speech act theory was first presented by Austin (1962) and later expanded by Searle (1969). While Austin introduced and laid out the groundwork for Speech Act theory, it was Searle who continued developing the theory and tying up loose ends. The current thesis mainly departs from Searle’s contributions to Speech Act theory, while also referring to Austin where relevant. Austin (1962) claimed that when someone produces an utterance, that person also performs concomitant speech acts. In the past, speech acts have been mainly researched in spoken language. However, the same rules apply to written communication as well. Austin (1962) distinguishes three speech acts, the
locutionary act, the illocutionary act, and the perlocutionary act.
First, the locutionary act of any utterance is the actual production of a meaningful linguistic expression and its literal meaning. This entails that when someone asks “Is there any salt?” at the dinner table, the locutionary act is the literal question of the presence of salt.
Second, the illocutionary act of an utterance is the intended meaning of a speech act. So when someone at the dinner table asks “Is there any salt?”, that person in-directly asks someone to pass the salt, rather than make an inquiry about the presence of salt.
Further, Searle (1979) set up a basic classification of illocutionary acts to explain how many different kinds of illocutionary acts there are. Assertives are the first category. According to Searle (1979, p.12), “The point or purpose of the members of the assertive class is to commit the speaker (in varying degrees) to something’s being the case, to the truth of the expressed proposition”. Statements and obviously assertions are part of this category. So when someone makes a statement, he or she also performs the illocutionary act of stating that the utterance is true. The second
category is directives. The goal of this illocutionary act is that the speaker is trying to get the hearer to do something, like passing the salt at the dinner table, closing a window in a cold room, and answering questions. Directives can range from suggestions to do something, to insisting someone does something, and even commanding someone. Next are commissives. In this category, the speaker commits him or herself to a future course of action. This can, again, be done in varying degrees such as promises, oaths, or statements such as “I’ll do my best”. The fourth category is
expressives. These encompass speech acts which express the speaker’s psychological state concerned
with a proposition. So when someone congratulates someone, the speaker expresses his or her feelings about the accomplishment or situation of the hearer. Excuses, condolences, and such are all part of this category. Finally, the last category is that of declarations. This category entails speech acts such as “I now declare you husband and wife”, which change the actual legal reality of the people affected by it. However, these acts cannot be performed by just anyone. Rather, they need to be performed by a speaker who has the legitimate power of marrying two people, such as a priest. An important aspect to note is that an utterance does not necessarily only has one illocutionary act. The locution of “It’s hot in here” has both the assertive and directive illocution. The speaker states the condition of the room, and also indirectly requests the hearer to open the window.
According to Searle and Vanderveken (1985), an illocutionary act consists of an illocutionary
force and a propositional content. Two utterances could have the same propositional content but
have different illocutionary forces. For example, “Is there any salt?” and “Pass me the salt!” both have the same propositional content, in other words, that you pass the salt. However, the first utterance has the illocutionary force of a request and the second utterance that of a command. The
illocutionary force of an utterance is realized through language devices such as mood, stress, word-order, punctuation, intonation, and others. These language elements which alter or determine the strength of an illocutionary force are called illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs). Thus, in the above-discussed example phrases, the question mark and the exclamation mark, among others, are IFIDs which determine the illocutionary force.
The third speech act distinguished by Austin (1962) is the perlocutionary act, which is the actual effect on the hearer of a speech act. This can be realized verbally, physically, psychologically, or in other ways. Thus, the question “Is there any salt?” at the dinner table, could result in the hearer passing the salt to the speaker, or simply responding with a “Sorry, no”. Even convincing someone of something results in a perlocutionary effect.
Speech act theory also extends to non-verbal languages, such as signs and images. Road signs, for example, signify meaning. The road sign in Image 1 is a sign with the literal definition ‘do not enter’, which is the locutionary act. The illocutionary act of this sign is a directive image which claims that this road is not supposed to be entered from the current direction, which everyone who has a driver’s license is supposed to know. The perlocutionary act of this sign is that when drivers of vehicles see it, they refrain from entering that street with their car. Thus, through the use of images people also perform speech acts, with intentions and reactions.
Image 1
In the same way, emojis can be said to be a non-verbal sign system that is used to perform speech acts. They are often used as text replacements in CMC, wherein parts of a text or a word are replaced with an emoji, to perform the locutionary act. A frequently occurring and popular example is the utterance “I you”. Here, the verb ‘love’ is replaced by a heart emoji, but the meaning of the phrase remains the same, whether it is produced with the actual verb or with the emoji. The same heart emoji can also be sent without any accompanying text as “ ”. And even in this case, the
utterance performs the locutionary act of communicating love.
Emojis are also used to make the illocutionary act of an utterance clear. Disambiguating messages is one of the primary functions of emojis. Whether it is to set a tone or clear up some nuances of the sentences, the main idea is to avoid misinterpretation and, thus, to make the intentions of the utterance clear. For example, the question “Want to have a drink this Friday?” literally asks someone whether they are available to meet up and have a drink on the coming Friday. That is the locutionary act of the utterance. However, the illocutionary act of the utterance is not exactly clear. The request could be a friendly invitation to have a drink as two friends, but also an invitation for a romantic date. The addition of a ‘blow a kiss’ emoji makes the whole utterance and its
intentions clearer: “Want to have a drink this Friday? ”. In the last example, the tone of the utterance becomes flirtatious from which the hearer is supposed to interpret an invitation for a romantic date. Thus, the emoji specifies the illocutionary act of the question and makes the intentions clearer.
Third, emojis can also be used to show the effect of an utterance, or the perlocutionary act, on the listener. A hearer’s reaction, or the perlocutionary act, often remains in the mind of the hearer. In other cases, indications of the perlocutionary act are physical reactions, or speech acts performed in order to answer a question or as a reaction to what the speaker said. In face-to-face interaction, this process is more readily detectable than in CMC. If one were to issue a warning to someone in face-to-face communication, then a bodily reaction of stopping what that person is doing would show the perlocutionary act. Or if one were to tell their romantic partner “I love you”, and the other person would smile and perhaps say “I love you too”, then the smile and the verbal response would be the perlocutionary act. However, in all written discourse, including CMC, these kinds of responses, which are not verbal but rather bodily or emotional, are hard to detect because they need to be explicitly produced and communicated. It does not happen as a natural reaction. To show a smile in CMC one has to actually type out the words “That made me smile”, or select a smiling emoji. If the last takes place, then it is the emoji which communicates the perlocutionary act of the initial “I love you” utterance in CMC.
4.2 Politeness theory
Brown and Levinson (1978) proposed a universal politeness theory which is applicable to all users of all natural languages in social settings. The theory rests upon the notion of face, which Brown and Levinson (1978) accurately describe in their book as follows:
Our notion of ‘face’ is derived from that of Goffman (1967) and from the English folk term, which ties face up with notions of being embarrassed or humiliated, or ‘losing face’. Thus face is something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction. In general, people cooperate (and assume each other’s cooperation) in maintaining face in interaction, such cooperation being based on the mutual vulnerability of face. That is, normally everyone’s face depends on everyone else’s being maintained, and since people can be expected to defend their faces if threatened, and in defending their own to threaten others’ faces, it is in general in every participant’s best interest to maintain each others’ face… (p. 66)
The concept of face is split into two components, namely positive face and negative face (Brown & Levinson, 1978). The former is defined as the want to be liked, desired, part of the in-group, ratified, admired, and such, while negative face is defined as the need of each individual to be autonomous, free, and have one’s actions unimpeded by others. All individuals claim both faces.
One’s face can be threatened through the production of so-called face-threatening acts (henceforth FTA). What happens when an FTA is performed is that face of the hearer, speaker, or both can be potentially damaged, making one or both of the interlocutors feel imposed on, excluded, rejected, disliked, or something else of this kind. In general, all communication is face-threatening, and it can be either linguistic or non-linguistic. The latter form of FTAs can be done through gaze, gestures, volume of speech, and others. So when someone flips up the middle finger to someone else that damages the hearer’s, or in this case viewer’s, positive face. The same can be achieved verbally.
Linguistic FTAs are classified in an exhaustive list by Brown and Levinson (1978). To name a few which could potentially damage the hearer’s negative face are orders, requests, suggestions, advice, remindings, threats, offers, expressions of envy, and such. So a request for the hearer to do something is an FTA because it imposes on the freedom of action of the hearer. The same applies to orders, and even, but less forcefully, to advice or suggestions. The hearer’s positive face can be threatened by criticism, ridicule, challenges and disagreements, interruptions, embarrassing use of address terms, and such. Thus, when the speaker disagrees with the hearer, this threatens the positive face of the hearer by making the hearer feel like an outsider. The numerous examples stated above are concerned with the speaker conducted FTAs towards the hearer.
However, the speaker can also produce FTAs which threaten the speaker’s own face. Some examples taken from Brown and Levinson (1978), but not limited to, of FTAs which threaten the speaker’s negative face are expressing thanks, excuses, acceptance of offers, unwilling promises. When the speaker, for example, makes reluctant promises towards the hearer, then the speaker commits himself to some future of action and by doing so restrains his own freedom. Further, the
speaker can also produce FTAs which threaten the speaker’s positive face, such as apologies, admissions of guilt, and others. Some examples of FTAs discussed above overlap because it is possible for an utterance to threaten both positive and negative face, and also of both interlocutors. Threats, for example, are one of the overlapping FTAs, because by threatening the hearer the speaker also excludes him or herself from the in-group.
People in conversation tend to produce FTAs in different ways, either with or without mitigation. The above-discussed list of possible FTAs has made one thing clear: all communication is in some way involved in keeping or threatening face. Brown and Levinson (1978) have provided a list of different ways FTAs can be performed. On the one hand, the most direct and most face damaging way to utter something is baldly. Which means that the speaker performs an FTA in a direct manner, such as for example, “Open the door!” without any mitigation of potential face threat. Sometimes people tend to communicate in this way out of pure efficiency. Or perhaps there is no need for the speaker to consider the face of the hearer because of unequal power relations. This will be
elaborated upon below. On the other hand, people also produce FTAs with redressive action, which means that they try to mitigate the face threat an utterance possesses. People do this through
positive politeness and negative politeness. The former entails that the speaker is very much aware
of the positive face of the hearer, and thus, tries to mitigate any potential positive face threat in an FTA. Ways to do this involve small talk, the right ways of addressing someone (treating the hearer as a member of the in-group), and others. The command “Open the door!” could be rephrased with positive politeness as “Open the door, so we both get some fresh air”. The latter example shows that the speaker also has the hearer’s wants in mind when uttering the request and, thus, mitigates positive face threat. Negative politeness in an FTA is achieved through mitigating potential negative face threat. This is accomplished through hedging, apologies for interfering, modality in requests, passive sentence constructions, and others. So the utterance “Open the door!” could be mitigated with negative politeness by rephrasing it as “Could you please open the door?”. The last example uses a modal verb, the word ‘please’, and is rephrased as a request rather than a command to mitigate negative face threat.
Brown and Levinson (1978) argue that the weight of an FTA depends on context. They consider three variables: the social distance or ‘D’, the relative power or ‘P’, and the absolute ranking of impositions in the particular culture ‘R’. Social distance is defined as the relative distance between the speaker and the hearer on a social level, as for example, D is relatively short between two close friends, while D is greater between two strangers. So an FTA in a friend to friend context has a lower weight of imposition value than the same FTA between two strangers. Relative power is the
command from the manager to the worker would be considered to have a lower FTA weight value than the other way around. The ranking of impositions is another fluid notion which changes
according to cultural or situational contexts. What Brown and Levinson (1978) mean with the R-value is that some requests can be considered either imposing or non-imposing with regard to the cultural and social contexts. For example, in some cultures, it is inappropriate to ask what salary the hearer makes (high value), while in other cultures this request is considered to be non-imposing (low R-value). In the end, the D, P, and R variables together determine the actual weight of imposition of an FTA. Interlocutors are aware of these relative contextual values lurking in the background of their conversation, and they are continually “dancing” according to the tune the context plays in order to maintain faces.
Face maintaining conversational strategies are not only natural in face-to-face interaction, but also in written CMC. There are plenty of ways to mitigate potential face threat in written communication, such as using modal verbs, hedging utterances, small talk, appropriate ways of addressing, and others. However, non-linguistic FTA mitigation instruments used in face-to-face interaction such as gaze, smiles, laughter, winks, and others were not available in written CMC for a long time. That is until emojis emerged.
Since the creation of emojis, they have been employed in written CMC to mitigate FTA. When we make a request of the hearer in face-to-face interaction, we perform an FTA. Depending on the context and D, P, R variables there are plenty of ways of uttering our request without damaging the negative face of the hearer. However, for the sake of argument, let us assume that we ask a close friend for a favour. The speaker asks the hearer for the following: “Could you water my plants while I’m away?”. In this case, the social distance and the power difference are pretty similar between the friends. In western cultures, this is a common thing to ask of a close friend when going on vacation, so the rating of the imposition is not high either. Thus, according to the three variables, we can conclude that the weight of the FTA is not high. First, this request threatens the negative face of the hearer, because he or she would have to come by the friend’s house every few days to water the plants. Second, the request also has the potential to damage the positive face of both the speaker and the hearer, because if the hearer does not comply with the request, it can make the speaker feel rejected. The speaker, however, tries to mitigate the face threat the utterance has by using a modal verb and formulating it as a request instead of a command. The same example can be used in a written CMC conversation with the addition of an emoji: “Could you water my plants while I’m away?
”. The same potential face threats are still there. Also, the same face threat mitigation of a modal verb and phrasing are still present. However, in addition to these, the emoji establishes a positive and light mood in the utterance. Thus, the emoji sets up the message to be interpreted as a light and
friendly request, and it works as another face threat mitigation device.
There are also other ways in which emojis are used to maintain face. According to Danesi (2017), people use emojis in phatic communication in several ways. First, emojis are used as utterance openers. This means that people sometimes open a CMC conversation with a smiling emoji, literally sending a positive face to their interlocutor. In this manner, they set a positive mood to the talk, strengthen the friendly bond between the interlocutors and maintain positive face, a sense of belonging. Another way to use emojis is as utterance ending. Danesi (2017) argues that emojis are employed at the end of conversations as a sort of “goodbye”. Often, CMC conversations end abruptly, and thus, there is a risk that the recipient could feel ignored or rejected. A smiling face at the end of the chat can mitigate any potential threat to positive face.
In addition, emojis are used for silence avoidance (Danesi, 2017). Even though CMC communication generally is silent, there are moments within a CMC conversation where one does not know what to answer or to say. These moments are equivalent to awkward silences in face-to-face conversation which are often filled with meaningless expressions such as small talk about the weather. In CMC, however, during such moments emojis are used which fill the “silence”. This makes the silent gap in the conversation less awkward, and in turn, preserves the positive face of the hearer, so he or she does not feel ignored.
5. Data collection
Data for this study were collected through the use of a questionnaire created with Google Forms, and the participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com). This website is a marketplace for work that requires human intelligence. The responses to the questionnaire were collected in April 2018. The survey was noted to be used for academic purposes only. Each participant was paid 1.30 euro for filling out the survey.
The fifty participants of the questionnaire had to fulfil some requirements. First, only people living in the United States of America were able to participate. This criterion was selected to make sure that the responses were filled out in English. Second, only reliable people who had a 95% approval rate of their previous work done on Mechanical Turk could fill out the survey. This
restriction was selected to minimize any potential non-sense responses to the questionnaire. In the end, two participants were removed from the data, one due to filling out the survey in Spanish and the other for a non-sense response.
The questionnaire was designed to be easy, clear, and elicit specific information. Instructions to fill the survey in on mobile phone devices were added to make it easier to copy and paste the CMC messages and the emojis because there is still no easy way to use emojis on a conventional
computer keyboard. The first two questions referred to the participant’s age and gender. To answer the gender question the participants could choose between female, male, or ‘prefer not to say’. The age question had multiple choice answers ranging from 18-24 (Student), 25-35 (Young adult), 36-50 (Middle age), 51 and older (Older ages). Further, the participants had to indicate through multiple choice answers what their relationship was with the correspondents. On the basis of these questions, the social distance and power difference between the interlocutors was determined. In order to answer the research questions of this thesis, the survey was designed to collect utterances containing both face and non-face emojis. There were empty text boxes where participants could share their emoji containing messages. The emoji examples in the questions were added to make it clear what face emojis, and non-face emojis are, so the participants would fill in the right ones. The collection of both face and non-face emoji utterances allows the current research to compare their usage and identify variations. After the participants filled in the messages containing emojis, they had to answer questions explaining the context of the conversation, why they chose that specific emoji, and what that emoji means according to them. These questions elicit meta-data, which is used in the analysis of the utterances in order to determine the functions of the used emojis and their meaning. The questionnaire is displayed in full below.
Questionnaire:
Emojis and their use
How do you use emojis?
* Required
Please use your mobile phone to fill out this short survey.
It will make it easier to answer some questions.
- What is your age? 18-24
25-35 36-50 51 and older
- What is your gender? Female
Male
Prefer not to say
- Please copy and paste your last message containing a face emoji ( , , or others) from a private chat (such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, or others). Also, include the message before and after it. If unclear, specify who said what. *
- Please explain the context of the conversation. *
Your answer [text box]
- Please explain why you chose that specific emoji and what that emoji means. *
Your answer [text box]
- How would you describe your relationship with the correspondent from the chat? Partner Family member Friend Colleague Stranger Other
- Please copy and paste your last message containing a non-face emoji ( , , or others) from a private chat (such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, or others). Also, include the message before and after it. If unclear, specify who said what. *
Your answer [text box]
- Please explain the context of the conversation. *
Your answer [text box]
- Please explain why you chose that specific emoji and what that emoji means. Your answer
[text box]
- How would you describe your relationship with the correspondent from the chat? *
Partner Family member Friend Colleague Stranger Other
6. Analysis, Discussion and Findings
Current research in emojis identified six main emoji functions. These were deducted from the conclusions and results of previous research (Cramer et al., 2016; Fathiya, 2015; Kelly & Watts, 2015, Sugiyama, 2015) and also from the analysis which follows this section. The six main emoji functions are made up of smaller sub-functions. Below is table 1 which shows the main emoji functions and their sub-functions.
Main function 1.Text replacement 2.Disambiguatio n 3.Reinforcement 4.Emotiona l expression 5.Relationship maintenance 6.Emphasi s Indicating approval or disapproval
Mark humour Reinforcing
subject matter Indicating emotion Create a shared and secret uniqueness Repetitive use of emoji Conversational openings and endings
Contextual cues Reinforcing tone Response to
thanks and compliment Silence avoidance Indicating fulfilment of a task
Establishing a tone Fake
emotional expression Adding meaning Adding meaning Table 1
The top row of the table consists of the six primary functions. The rows below are filled with their respective sub-functions. Below is explained how these functions were categorized.
Text replacement is the main function of four sub-functions. Indicating approval or disapproval, Conversational openings and endings, Indicating fulfilment of a task, and Adding meaning have all been categorized under the text replacement header because these sub-functions
can also easily be achieved through the use of text. Indicating approval in a message can be said with words, but also through a ‘thumbs-up’ emoji. Further, a conversation can be opened by saying hello, but also through the ‘hand-waving’ emoji. The same line of thinking applies to the sub-functions of
Indicating fulfilment of a task and Adding meaning.
Disambiguation is made up out of several sub-functions. Marking humour in an utterance is
achieved by adding laughing emojis, which set-up a non-serious interpretation of the message. Emojis are also used to Establish a tone of interpretation, or as Contextual cues to disambiguate utterances. In addition, disambiguating an utterance is in a way adding meaning to it which was not there textually. So the sub-function of Adding meaning is not only part of text replacement but also of disambiguation.
Reinforcement is a main function which reinforces the tone or subject matter through the
use of an emoji. This is often achieved through repeating what was said by using an emoji to encapsulate the subject matter. The tone of an utterance which was produced linguistically is often also reinforced through an emoji.
Emotional expression function is realised through emojis being used to express one’s feelings
emojis. They can also fake their emotional expression, by using a sad emoji as a reply to something when not feeling sad about it at all. Emojis used to respond to thanks and compliments is often also an expression of emotional gratitude or attitude.
Relationship maintenance is when emojis are used to acknowledge and strengthen the bond
between interlocutors. This is often done through loving emojis, but also through the use of an emoji which has a special and unique meaning for the interlocutors.
And finally, Emphasis is realised through repetitive use of an emoji. The characteristic of this function is that the same emoji is used numerous times in the same utterance. Repetitive use of an emoji amplifies or emphasizes the original function. For example, a laughing face emoji can be used to mark humour, but when there are five laughing faces used in a sequence, it emphasizes that the marked utterance is supposed to be not just funny, but hilarious.
Cramer et al. (2016) identified that emojis are used as a tool to adhere to social and
conversation norms. This function has not been categorized in Table 1, because it is part of all. Emojis being used to adhere to social and conversational norms has a lot to do with positive and negative politeness, as laid out by Brown and Levinson (1978), and will be discussed in most of the examples used below.
Further, one emoji can have several functions. People use emojis in the most diverse and ingenious ways and they often have more than just one goal. A single emoji in a message can replace
text, maintain relationship, and express an emotional state. This has proven to be a difficulty when
organizing and categorizing the data. In the end, the most important function the emoji exhibits in the examples was chosen as the head function.
Some emoji sub-functions will not be discussed in the analysis. Sub-functions such as
indicating fulfilment of a task, fake emotional expression and some others were not clearly exhibited
in the data. However, all head functions under which the sub-functions fall will be discussed. Data from the survey are organized in a more orderly fashion than provided by the participants. This was done to make it easier to follow who wrote what. However, any deviant spelling variations, punctuation, and abbreviations were kept as provided by the participants of the questionnaire. The person who filled out the survey is marked as the speaker (S) in the examples, while the other person in the conversation is marked as the hearer (H). The speaker is, thus, the person who explained the context, intention, and meaning of the emoji. In some cases, the
participants did not provide the literal utterances produced by H but paraphrased what H had said in the context. In these cases, H’s potential phrase was deducted from the background information and marked in italics in the examples.
Emojis are frequently used to function as text replacements. Sometimes they only replace a single word and other times entire messages consist of one or several emojis. Previous research concerned with emoji functions (Cramer et al. 2016; Fathiya 2015; Kelly & Watts, 2015, Sugiyama, 2015) have not discussed how emojis work when they replace entire utterances, and Dresner & Herring (2010) have argued that emoticons are not capable of communicating locutions without accompanying words. The following section of the thesis aims to illustrate and elaborate how emojis are sometimes used to replace all of the text in an utterance and are capable of successfully communicating a message in certain contexts.
This section shows examples of both face and non-face emojis. This ordering was chosen because some examples in this section contain both face and non-face emojis, which would make a clear separation difficult. Other sections will have the separation of face and non-face emojis in sub-sections.
6.1.1 Face and non-face emojis as text replacement
In the data of the survey, there are numerous instances of shared messages where people
communicated with just emojis. Sometimes they used one emoji, and other times they created a sort of rebus made out of several face and non-face emojis which are supposed to represent a sentence. In Example 1 we see one of these cases.
H: (a request to help look for the cat)
S:
(Appendix face emojis 4) Example 1
The participant who sent the message in Example 1 only provided the message he sent, without previous or following utterances. However, he accurately described the context and what was previously said in the meta-data. His mother had asked him whether he could help look for the cat, and the emojis were his reply to the request. S’s utterance is made up entirely out of face and non-face emojis, which means that the emojis perform the locutionary act. A literal ‘read’ of the images would be ‘happy smiling face’ ‘looking eyes’ ‘cat’.
The illocutionary act, though, only becomes clear when the conversational context is taken into consideration. Previous research (Cramer et al. 2016; Fathiya, 2015, Kelly & Watts, 2015) have argued that emojis are often used to disambiguate messages. However, in utterances where emojis replace all text, they do not perform this function. Instead, they make the message even more
ambiguous. The emojis in Example 1 can be interpreted in various ways, such as, “I was looking at a cat”, or something else of that sort. However, the preceding request made by the mother makes the illocutionary intent of the emojis clear. The utterance is supposed to be an agreement, and in turn, a commissive illocutionary act, because it commits the speaker to a future course of action. This also becomes clear from the explanation of what the emojis convey by the participant, where he says that they mean “I will happily help look for the cat”.
Further, in Example 1, emojis are used to perform the perlocutionary act. The previous message sent by H was a request to help look for the cat. The speech act made by H can be qualified as a directive question, which in turn elicits a reaction from the speaker, who produces a
perlocutionary act by replying. The speaker’s reply consists entirely out of emojis, and, thus, they operate as the perlocutionary act.
From the perspective of Politeness theory, the emojis in Example 1 maintain the positive face of H. When analyzing FTAs it is vital to understand the sociological variables which determine the seriousness of the FTA. Since the conversation is between a mother and a son, the social distance between them is small, and the ranking of imposition of the mother’s request is not high either. However, their relative power is not equal. In most cultural contexts, the parents can be considered to have relatively more power than their children. Thus when taking the D, P, and R values together, the request (FTA) made by the mother (H) to help look for the cat, which threatens the negative face of the son (S), can be considered to have a low weight of imposition. As discussed above, the
speaker’s reply to the request consists entirely out of emojis and is an agreement to comply with the request. By agreeing, through the use of emojis, to help look for the cat, the speaker maintains the positive face of the hearer. If the speaker would not comply with the request, then the hearer could feel rejected and have her positive face damaged. In addition, the speaker uses emojis which
communicate that he would happily look for the cat. The reply could have consisted of just the words ‘yes’ or ‘sure’, or even just the ‘ ’ thumbs up emoji to signify agreement. However, the conscious
choice of adding a broadly smiling emoji ‘ ’, communicating that the speaker would happily look for the cat, further mitigates any potential positive face threat of the utterance.
Emojis which replace text and are still accompanied by words are easier to interpret than emojis which replace all text. In these cases, the emojis only replace a word or a short phrase of an utterance. They are inserted in the same spot in the sentence as the word would be keeping the grammatical structure intact. This is probably the most important factor determining the
interpretability of the sentence. If the emoji would replace a word and would be placed in a different space in the sentence, that would make it more difficult to interpret the sentence correctly. Example
2 illustrates how a non-face emoji replaces part of an utterance, yet retains the grammatical structure and keeps the sentence easy to understand.
S: Come pick up your H: Sure thing
(Appendix non-face emojis 8) Example 2
The cat emoji replaces the word ‘cat’ and is placed in the same spot the word would be, thus, keeping the grammatical structure intact. Even without much context and explanation, it is clear what is going on in Example 2. The speaker is making a request, a directive illocutionary act, of H to pick up the hearer’s feline. However, there is more going on in this example than just an emoji replacing text.
The goal of the non-face emoji in Example 2 is to mitigate the FTA. According to the meta-data, the interlocutors are friends, with relatively equal social distance. However, S was cat sitting for H, which makes their power relationship unequal. The speaker did the hearer a favour by looking after his cat, and that makes the speaker have slightly more ‘power’ than the hearer. The unequal power relation between the interlocutors makes S’s request less face-threatening. In addition, the ranking of the imposition of the speaker’s request is not high either. It is not imposing of S to ask H to pick up his cat, because S was cat sitting and doing H a favour. The contextual information of D, P, and R already mitigate the FTA. In addition, according to the meta-data, the speaker wanted to mitigate the FTA even further by adding the cat emoji, to make it seem less like a demand.
6.1.2 Comparison between face and non-face emojis as text replacement
The above-discussed examples illustrate how both face and non-face emojis are used to replace text in messages. The interpretability of messages containing only emojis could vary, depending on the conversational context. However, the analysis has shown that messages containing only emojis can very well communicate locutions and the illocutionary acts. Further, when emojis replace just a single word in a sentence, it is crucial that the emoji is placed in the same spot the word was in the sentence. Otherwise, the interpretation of the utterance becomes difficult. The discussion of the examples has also demonstrated that both face and non-face emojis can be used to mitigate potential face threats when replacing text.
Emojis are frequently used to disambiguate utterances (Cramer et al., 2016; Fathiya, 2015; Kelly & Watts, 2015). They do this by establishing a tone in the utterance which is crucial for the correct interpretation. In addition, emojis also disambiguate by marking humour in an utterance for it not to be taken seriously, i.e. showing playfulness, joking, banter, or sarcasm. The intention of these kinds of utterances is to amuse the hearer, and this sort of illocutionary act is not discussed by Searle (1979). Therefore, the current research would like to propose an additional illocutionary act category, that of playfulness, which is elaborated upon below.
6.2.1 Face emojis marking humour
In his categorization of the illocutionary acts, Searle (1979) does not discuss speech acts which are intended to be understood as jokes, irony, sarcasm or other non-serious utterances. However, previous (Cramer et al., 2016; Fathiya, 2015) and current research encounter instances where emojis are used to mark an utterance to be taken non-seriously. This sort of intention of an utterance does not fit the categories laid out by Searle (1979). Therefore, the current study would like to propose an additional category to Searle’s taxonomies of the illocutionary acts. That is to say, the illocutionary act of playfulness, where the intention of the utterance is to be taken non-seriously and to amuse or joke in some way.
Example 3 illustrates how face emojis can be used to mark humour, a playful illocutionary act, in a message. This example is from a conversation between a husband and wife, who, according to the meta-data, were discussing vacation plans for the summer.
H: Yeah whatever
S: babe gonna sell his shoes and take me there over the summer H: Babe better sale her shoes
(Appendix face emojis 37) Example 3
S sent pictures of the Niagara Falls and said she wants to go there over the summer, but her husband said they could not afford it. Then the wife proceeds by telling him that they could afford it if the husband sold some of his expensive shoes, accompanied by two face emojis. The utterance in the example made by S, without the emojis, is a directive illocutionary act because the goal of the utterance is to get the husband to do something, which is selling his shoes and take her to the Niagara Falls. Further, the illocutionary force of the text utterance is a command, because there are no linguistic IFIDs which reduce the force of the message. The face emojis, though, change the
intention and force of the utterance.
The ‘ ’ alters the mood of the message and the illocutionary force of the utterance. Without the emojis, the utterance sent by S is a blunt command. The emojis soften this command because they work as IFIDs which reduce the strength of the illocutionary force. The pictorial images change the mood of the sentence from the imperative mood to a subjunctive mood. While the verbs in the sentence indicate the imperative mood, the emojis soften it to the subjunctive mood where the wife expresses a wish to where she wants to go on vacation. Thus, the emojis in this example work as IFIDs which reduce the force of the utterance.
The emojis also change the illocutionary act from a directive act to a playful act. When the mood of the utterance is changed from a command to a wish, the intended interpretation also changes. Instead of being intended as a command, the face emojis indicate that the utterance should be read as some sort of banter. The surrounding messages point to this playful interpretation even further. H’s first message contains a widely smiling emoji with closed eyes, which shows that the general mood of the conversation was positive. The following message is from the wife, which is a subjunctive utterance with the intention to tease. H’s response to that also seems like a directive command, but when taking the surrounding context in consideration it could be read as a joke back at the wife. Thus, there appears to be some sort of banter going on between the interlocutors, which is marked by the emojis.
The use of emojis by S is also a way to mitigate the FTA. As has become clear from the discussion above, the linguistic utterance made by S could be interpreted as a blunt command when reading without the accompanying emojis. According to Brown and Levinson (1978), the FTA could be classified as being made baldly and without redressive action, threatening both the positive and negative face of the hearer. The interlocutors are husband and wife, so their social distance is small. From the conversation excerpt provided by the wife, it could, arguably, be deducted that the
husband could be considered to have relatively more power than the wife with regard to the topic of going on vacation. This could be assumed because it seems that the husband is in charge of the finances and could, arguably, be the sole provider for the family. However, there is little evidence to support this claim substantially, and thus, it shall be assumed that the power relation between the two is relatively equal. Further, banter between husband and wife is considered not unusual in modern Western cultures, where the husband and wife are considered equals on a social level. Thus, the sociological variables do not strengthen the seriousness of the FTA. Nonetheless, commanding someone to sell their shoes in order to take you on vacation is still both positive and negative face threatening. It imposes on the freedom of action of the hearer, and could potentially also damage the sense of belonging of both the speaker and hearer. However, the wife sent the message with the
‘ ’ emojis. As argued above, the emojis change the command to a playful utterance which should not be taken seriously, and thus mitigate both the positive and negative face threat, i.e. positive and negative politeness are realised through the use of emojis.
In addition, this specific emoji has a conventionalized meaning used in different CMC conversations to express and show love towards the hearer. So when used in this conversation, the emoji not only indicates that the hearer should interpret the message as playful, but also that the speaker shows her love towards the hearer, maintaining both their positive faces.
6.2.2 Non-face emojis marking humour
In the data of this study, there are no utterances where non-face emojis are used to mark humour. 6.2.3 Face emojis setting the tone
The present data also has no instances where face emojis alone set the tone of interpretation. There are some examples where emojis reinforce the already linguistically established tone of an utterance, but these fall under the function of reinforcing rather than establishing a tone and will be discussed later in the thesis.
6.2.4 Non-face emojis setting the tone
The ‘thumbs-up’ non-face emoji is used to disambiguate utterances by establishing a tone. According to the context provided for Example 4, the conversation is in a family group chat where they
sometimes play a game. The point of the game is that someone posts a scene from a movie, and then someone else has to guess which movie the scene is from. Apparently, one of the group members frequently guesses the right movie and does it very quickly. S makes a statement about that person guessing the right answer, which is the focus of this example. The utterance is an
expressive illocutionary act, which shows S’s approval of H guessing the right answer so quickly. If we consider the speaker’s utterance without the emoji, then it could be read as a complaint rather than a compliment. H might always guess the right scenes in their game and S could have felt annoyed by this because he never gets a chance to try to answer. S could have even used a ‘thumbs-down’ ‘ ’ emoji to establish a negative tone in the utterance and make his complaint clear.
H: (guessing the right answer)
(Appendix non-face emojis 47) Example 4
The use of the emoji also mitigates the FTA and maintains positive face of both interlocutors through positive politeness. As argued above, without the non-face emoji, the utterance made by S could be interpreted as a complaint, and that could severely damage both the interlocutor’s positive faces. With the complaint the speaker would make the hearer feel excluded and not liked, and in turn, it would also exclude the speaker from the hearer. However, the ‘thumbs-up’ emoji functions as a tool for positive politeness, which mitigates the potential positive face threat to both. In addition, the non-face emoji strengthens the bond between the interlocutors and maintains their positive faces, because it disambiguates the utterance from a possible complaint to a sure compliment.
6.2.5 Comparison of face emojis and non-face emojis disambiguating
The analysis above has illustrated that face emojis can be used to mark an utterance as playful, and also to mitigate potential face threat when disambiguating messages. On the other hand, non-face emojis have not been observed marking playfulness. This could be an indication of a difference in functions between face and non-face emojis.
Further, while non-face emojis have been observed to be used to establish a tone of interpretation and disambiguating utterances, face emojis have not been seen performing these functions. This finding could possibly be another indication that face and non-face emojis are not used in the same ways.
6.3 Reinforcing
The reinforcing function of emojis can be realised in two ways, through the reinforcement of the tone and reinforcement of the subject matter. In the first function, they merely reinstate the tone that is already conveyed in the utterance through linguistic devices. In the latter function, the emojis simply show, or reinforce, what has been said in the utterance.
6.3.1 Face emojis reinforcing tone
Face emojis are used to reinforce the tone an utterance already sets in a linguistic manner. The way face emojis do this is shown in Example 5.
S: We’ve missed your sweet family the past couple of weeks! I hope all is well and that we’ll see you
