Experimental evidence for a semantic typology of emoji: inferences of co-, pro-, and post-text emoji

Lyn Tieu*, Jimmy L. Qiu, Vaishnavy Puvipalan, Robert Pasternak

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Emoji symbols are widely used in online communication, particularly in instant messaging and on social media platforms. Existing research draws comparisons between the functions of emoji and those of gestures, with recent work extending a proposed typology of gestures to emoji, arguing that different emoji types can be distinguished by their placement within the modified text and by their semantic contribution (the linguistic inferences that they give rise to). In this paper, we present four experiments designed to test the predictions of this extended typology, the results of which suggest that emoji symbols indeed trigger the hypothesised linguistic inferences. The findings provide support for a semantic typology of emoji and contribute further evidence of the parallels between gesture and emoji.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)808-826
Number of pages19
JournalQuarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Volume78
Issue number4
Early online date16 May 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2025

Bibliographical note

Copyright Experimental Psychology Society 2024 . Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

Keywords

  • emoji
  • gesture
  • inferences
  • pragmatics
  • presupposition
  • projection
  • semantics
  • supplements

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