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Social media as a fast-growing mode of communication has disruptive tendencies that create language change in digital contexts. A global trend of language transformation from words to pictograms (graphicons) in digital communication is observed in messaging language use, usually initiated by the young people in online interactions which eventually becomes established. This paper examines the functional use of graphicons such as emoji, sticker, GIF and meme as effective communication tools in digital conversations. Specifically, the study aims at exploring usage trends and meaningful ways the visual icons are used to achieve communication goals with or without texts. Data was purposefully drawn from 309 screenshot messages obtained from the respective class representatives of the selected classes’ WhatsApp platforms of students in Accounting, Computer and Systems Engineering Departments of the University of Lagos. 203 google questionnaires and follow-up unstructured interviews were also used to collect data. Pragmatic analysis of data was conducted using the Gricean cooperative principles or conversational maxims as the theoretical underpinning. Results show that emoji and sticker in particular, are an intrinsic part of young people’s social media communication with strong chances of sustained usage. They are used mainly for reaction, rapport management and message clarification. New functional and more expressive graphicons are recommended for technological devices. This paper not only expands literature in the field of linguistics, but also contributes to the fields of digital/computer communication and language development. It also fosters knowledge, facilitates understanding in digital user experience and adds pedagogical stimulus for students and software developers.

The present study examined the pragmatic functions of graphicons used in six different WhatsApp communities created by and for school parents, written in Mexican Spanish, which had the purpose of sharing information relating to daily classroom concerns. A total of 4,824 WhatsApp messages written by these 143 school parents were analyzed using the taxonomy proposed by Herring and Dainas (2017, Nice picture comment! Graphicons in Facebook comment threads. In: Proceedings of the Fifthieth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE Press, pp. 2185–2194. ). The findings revealed that emoji were the most common graphical device used and they were always visually connected to the verbal content of the speech acts they accompanied. Another result showed that photos were the second most preferred multimodal. These photos were impersonal and as well as emoji, they fulfilled requested tasks as this was a task-oriented group. The findings further suggested that the low frequency of the occurrence of stickers, videos, and GIFS was probably due to the particularities of this community of practice. Thus, the use of emoji and graphicons were constrained by the requested tasks of these communities.

This article examined the intersection and interaction among positioning, communication modes, and culture by taking positioning theory as a theoretical framework. Data were collected from a WeChat discussion group where three Chinese international students engaged in a community of English as a second language (L2) literacies. A multimodal discourse analysis reveals that three WeChat group members creatively, freely, and deliberately used verbal language and graphicons along with their cultural beliefs and situational contexts to construct, negotiate, and sometimes reject positions. Findings also show that three types of self-other positioning were frequently constructed and negotiated through their discussions, such as the “Self-Agreed-to-Other,” “Self-Opposed-to-Other,” and “Self-Complained-to-Other” positioning. The “Self-Agreed-with-Other” positioning was explicitly conveyed, but the “Self-Opposed-to-Other” positioning was implicitly expressed, which can be attributed to one of the Chinese cultural values: face (mianzi). In addition, graphicons, such as emojis and stickers, were used to challenge first-order positioning and negotiate second-order positioning. Also, the semiotic sign @ used to specify WeChat message recipients performed illocutionary acts as including someone or excluding them from the discussion based on a specific interactional discourse. Graphicons, collectively and sometimes independently, were utilized to contribute to positions that not only provided or limited opportunities for L2 literacies practice but also invited or sometimes rejected community memberships. Future research on the incongruent verbal and nonverbal expression for different types of positioning is needed, especially when verbal language and graphicons are used collaboratively to design meaning.

The textual intercourse in computer-mediated communication is intertwined with graphicons of various forms, gaining new meanings and functions. They are part of the online culture and, specifically, part of the communicative skills in digital environment. In many cases, graphicons are used not as signs of emotion but rather as indication of the illocutionary force of the textual utterances that they accompany. The current work endeavours to reveal the specific aspect of language use where iconoid objects “take over” and substitute textual utterances. The paper also attempts to trace to what extent pragmatics could be applicable in the analysis of the visual representations (i.e. graphicons) embodied in computer-mediated communication as means of communicative acts. The different graphicon forms and the dynamics in the usage carry additional challenge for the interpretation of the “visual” act. However, it is possible to systematically trace a pattern in the occurrence of the graphicons – their use as a complementary to a written statement, and their use as a single communicative act.