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On the other side of the earth, Joan Gajadhar and John Green (2005) did an experiment within a group of students, analyzed the data and obtained that nonverbal communication adds nuance or richness of meaning that cannot be communicated by verbal elements alone.
In terms of the impacts of Internet emoticons on message interpretation in computer-mediated communication, Joseph B. Walther and Kyle P. D’Addario (2001) indicated that Internet emoticons’ contributions were outweighed by verbal content, but a negativity effect appeared such that any negative message aspect—verbal or graphic—shifts message interpretation in the direction of the negative element. In the article Emoticons and Online Message Interpretation, Daantje Derks, Arjan E. R. Bos and Jasper von Grumbkow concluded that to a large extent, Internet emoticons serve the same functions as actual nonverbal behavior. It involved the content of linguistics, but is also not deep.
As to nonverbal communication, Argyle (1970) raised that non-verbal codes are used to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships. It is considered more polite or nicer to communicate attitudes towards others non-verbally rather than verbally, for instance in order to avoid embarrassing situations. Actually the first scientific study of nonverbal communication was Charles Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. He argued that all mammals reliably show emotion in their faces. Seventy years later Silvan Tomkins began his classic studies on human emotions in Affects Imagery Consciousness volumes 1-4. Rudolf Laban and Warren Lamb raised body movement analysis in the world of dance to a high level.
In my view, the main problems of the related research in the past are: For one thing, few of them discussed the causes of Internet emoticons from pragmatics and the related people’s cognitive psychological aspects, therefore they cannot give an accurate positioning of the essence of Internet emoticons. For another, they restricted the research to semiotic factors such as its forms and structure characteristics, lacking of rational thinking about the generation and interpretation of the cognitive process of Internet emoticons. So it is worthwhile and meaningful to dig deeply into the linguistic significance of Internet emoticons. For these two problems, this article will attempt to discuss the Internet emoticons from two parts. The first part is semiotic analysis aiming to explain some basic questions about Internet emoticons. The second part is pragmatic analysis aiming to solve the deeper interpretation of Internet emoticons. By so doing, the thesis is intended to solve the following two questions: How Internet emoticons make meaning? What is the essence of Internet emoticons? Hopefully, this study will deepen the understanding of Internet emoticons and facilitate uses of them in daily communication.
2 A Semiotic Analysis of Internet Emoticons
Based on the concept of semiotics, this chapter is intended to explain how emoticons work as means of signification and why a simple combination of punctuations could become a smiley, an expression of a smiling face, which can be transferred and understood by the recipient.
But what is an Internet emoticon? Before going into a more detailed discussion of the Internet emoticon, its construction and meaning, the author of this thesis will briefly sum up some basic aspects of interpreting signs as meaning-making.
2.1 Signs and Meaning
What is a sign? “Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as ‘signifying’ something – referring to or standing for something other than itself.” (Daniel Chandler, sem02.html). In other words signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no meaning and become signs only when people invest them with meaning.
Semiotics is defined as the study of signs and how they work in the process of making meaning. People usually take things as signs unconsciously and will link and relate them to their familiar traditional concept. It is this meaningful use of signs which is at the heart of semiotics.