Emojis as graphic equivalents of prosodic features in natural speech: evidence from computer-mediated discourse of WhatsApp and facebook

Abstract

The current study aims to establish that emojis are graphic equivalents for prosodic features in natural speech. The rapid emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of communication urged to investigate emojis, used as a strategy to achieve visual prosody in computer-mediated communication (CMC). The study adopts mixed- methodology and computer-mediated-discourse analysis (CMDA) that focuses on manipulation of grammatical rules to create typographic impression to achieve prosody. Data is collected from 300 WhatsApp and Facebook users using an instrument—questionnaire. Data has been analyzed in two ways: descriptive analysis of chats and quantitative analysis getting frequencies of the emojis. The study arguably provides: (i) syntactic variants of the use of emojis: emoji aspect, ellipsis, embedding, embedded, bare, partial bare, beside words, repetition of emoji and repetition of emoji encoded utterance, (ii) variant manifestations of emojis displaying emotions at scalar level, and (iii) basic emotions: anger, joy, sarcasm, fear and neutral displayed via emojis’ varying manifestations; laughter, pouting face, non-emotion emojis representing objects and human faces. The overall findings predict that the observed construction is encoded with different placements of emojis and emojis are displaying diverse manifestations to exhibit prosodic features in CMC such as intonation, rhythm, duration, pause and stress. These prosodic features of emojis manifest aggression, love, hate, sadness and joy. The study hopes to augment the knowledge in the field of CMC and motivates the future researchers to conduct further studies in graphic switching and social implementation of CMC.

Keywords

• Emojis
• computer-mediated-communication (CMC;), face-to-face (FTF;), prosodic features
• syntactic variants
• Nonverbal Communication
• Philosophy
• Language & Linguistics