Russian Linguistic Bulletin (Jan 2023)
EMOJI – MEANS OF SHARING ‘COMMON KNOWLEDGE’ ABOUT EMOTIONS AND THEIR INTONATION IN DISCOURSE
Abstract
The paper aims at showing how emoji act as means of sharing ‘common/shared knowledge’ in computer-mediated communication in the multicultural community. Emoji are used as substitutes for words (adjectives and adverbs), which accompany direct oral speech in fiction and express, or describe, speakers` emotions, or gestures in face-to-face communication and function as contextualization cues for the readers` choice of intonation to imitate real-life discourse. The research demonstrates how respondents correlate emoji and such words in read-aloud sentences. Corpus analysis was undertaken to build the sample with such utterances words accompanying direct speech in English fiction. Further, emoji sample from Russian social media platform was built and organized into sets according to their meanings and distribution towards each other. The questionnaire was used to request the respondents to draw a parallel between the emoji and the word describing the emotional state of the speaker. The respondents involved in the research were English L2 students (native Russian speakers). The results show that respondents organize emoji into fuzzy functional sets with central and peripheral areas. The emoji in central areas have clear-cut, non-ambiguous interpretation and show greater percentage of use. Peripheral areas include emoji with overlapping meanings and lesser usage frequency. The ambiguity can result from cultural differences in interpreting the emotional state of the speaker; resolution of this ambiguity contributes to better understanding of L2 vocabulary and better reading proficiency.
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