The communicative repertoire of the human species was recently extended with the emergence of emoticons. Emoticons can be defined as signs that visualize physical aspects of a communicative situation, which are placed on the Internet accompanied by ascribed meanings. They originated in computer-mediated communication. Initially, they consisted of a limited set of carriers of meaning that could be produced using mainly non-alphabetical characters on a computer keyboard, and had to be read sideways; for example, : - ) and : - ( . Later, a huge number of graphic symbols emerged. Why study emoticons? Users think that they are funny and that they enliven text-only messages. They do not see them as problematic. Language and communication analysts, however, are puzzled by the fact that these seemingly superficial message-embellishments have not only permeated computer-mediated communication, but also abound in everyday life. I applied discourse-analytic perspectives in order to reveal emoticons’ functions. It is indeed the case that the Internet has bred a new form of communication that is being exploited in far more intricate ways than either users or many scholars realize...
