EMOTICONS AND MULTIMODALITY. THE USE OF THE THUMBS-UP EMOJI ON WHATSAPP

In the present paper a multimodal approach to the study of emoticons is proposed by analyzing the use of the thumbs-up emoji in a corpus of WhatsApp messages. One of the main aims of the paper is to overcome the idea, still deeply rooted, that emoticons are used to express emotions in digital communication. Moreover, this study takes into account some aspects traditionally overlooked in the research on emoticons, namely the history of these semiotic resources, the sophisticated relations between image and text and the interaction among users in real life and on screen.