Emoticons: A Semiotic and Pragmatic Perspective

The aim of this article is twofold. First, from a semiotic perspective, it clarifies the status of emoticons, modal marks which appeared relatively recently in computer-mediated communication. The author briefly looks at the history of these signs and then categorizes them more precisely, based both on Peircean semiotics and on European semiotic studies on the relations between text and image. He then examines the pragmatic and enunciative functions of emoticons in a chat corpus. The aim is both to question existing theories, on modalization for example, challenged by these new research subjects, and to propose an analysis that furthers our understanding of the relation between iconic signs and the accompanying text. In so doing, the author seeks to open up in-depth reflection on the way in which relations between the verbal and the non-verbal are understood, both in the language sciences and in communication science in general.