A study of phatic emoji use

in WhatsApp communication
Bethany Aull
Universidad de Sevilla

Mobile messaging is considered as a prominent site for phatic communica-

tion, where interpersonal connection is often foregrounded over informa-
tion transaction. Though frequently overlooked, a large amount of this
interpersonal work is done nonverbally through regular and meaningful
emoji use. This exploratory study deals with emoji use within Laver’s (1975)
phatic token framework, showing that different relationship structures (e.g.,
status-differential vs. solidary) correspond to distinct phatic token norms.
The article analyzes phatic emoji use in a small-scale corpus of WhatsApp
interactions between (a) a teacher and her L2-English students and (b) a
teacher and her friends/family. Qualitative and quantitative analyses reveal
patterns which widely corroborate Laver’s account of socially marked and
unmarked token options: the teacher, the students, and the friends/family
members tend towards addressee-specific use of neutral, other-oriented, and
self-oriented phatic emojis.

Keywords: electronically-mediated communication, emojis, phatic

communion, phatic tokens, pragmatics, WhatsApp

1. Introduction

Communication endeavoring foremost to manifest social connectedness, here

referred to as phatic communication, has been minimally and vaguely addressed
in the literature to date (e.g., Laver 1975; Schneider 1987; Coupland, Coupland and
Robinson 1992; Žegarac 1998; Padilla Cruz 2004). Emojis, for their part, are begin-
ning to receive more attention in communication research but still appear in rel-
atively few pragmatic inquiries (but see Sampietro 2016). Nevertheless, Dresner
and Herring (2010: 250) argue that by virtue of their imbued pragmatic meaning,
emoticons and emojis need to be “understood in linguistic, rather than extralin-
guistic, terms”.

https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00029.aul | Published online: 7 June 2019

Internet Pragmatics 2:2 (2019), pp. 206–232. issn 2542-3851 | e‑issn 2542-386x
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 207

To respond to this gap, this article explores emoji use in natural WhatsApp
communication vis-à-vis Laver’s (1975) framework of phatic token norms. The
study reported herein tests this model’s adequacy in accounting for phatic emoji
behavior in two dimensions: (1) in solidary (friend/family) versus status-
differential (student-teacher) relationships; and (2) between high-status (instruc-
tor) and low-status (pupil) interactants. All of these natural interactions involved
the researcher, who was also the English-learners’ instructor in the status-
differential group. Recognizing that emojis are not inherently phatic and are very
often multifunctional, this study focuses on emoji use identified to be principally
phatic within and across these participant groups. Examples from the qualitative
analysis illustrate how interactants employ emojis to establish, uphold, and shift
their relational standing in conversation. Complementary quantitative methods
moreover illuminate certain patterns in each participant group’s emoji use.
The following section reviews relevant theoretical and empirical work on
phatic communion, phatic tokens, and emoji use. As this section shows, research
to date has alluded to its interpersonal functions but has yet to thoroughly explore
and conceptualize emoji use. The methods designed to home in on these under-
examined aspects in this study are detailed in the subsequent section. The analysis
section outlines exploratory findings from this blended approach. Finally, the con-
clusion section addresses the intersections of aspects of emoji use as a site of inter-
est to pragmatics.

2. Review of relevant research

2.1 Phatic communion

Phatic communion in interaction constitutes the use of language and/or par-

alanguage to create “ties of union”, where this purpose takes precedence over
transmitting information (Malinowski 1923). As such, it directly bridges commu-
nicational and social aims: by prioritizing facework (Goffman 1955), phatic talk
emulates the participants’ relational alignments, thereby fostering effective con-
ditions for other communicational goals, such as information transaction. Laver
(1975) points to phatic talk in marginal phases (i.e., openings and closings) as
being essential to first establishing the relationship and finally reinforcing their
continuation beyond interactional encounters. Seen this way, phatic communion
is a “most important social and psychological instrument, in that the cumula-
tive consensus about a relationship reached as the result of repeated encounters
between the two participants constitutes the essence of that relationship” (Laver
208 Bethany Aull

1975: 233). In this way, it is characterized as interpersonal or relational; that is, it

expresses the relationship standing between the interactants.
Phatic talk has typically been approached in spoken face-to-face conversa-
tions and in terms of entire interactional encounters (e.g., small talk, Schneider
1987; Coupland 2000; McCarthy 2003) or segments of exchanges (like conversa-
tional openings and closings, Laver 1975). Phatic communion is therefore often
related to routine expressions and conventionalized exchanges (Coupland, Cou-
pland and Robinson 1992; Žegarac 1998). Nevertheless, these boundaries may fail
to capture the extent of phatic behavior; rather, “[p]haticity may be best seen
as a constellation of interactional goals that are potentially relevant to all con-
texts of human interchange” (Coupland, Coupland and Robinson 1992: 211). In
permeating multiple levels of communication, first-order relational motives can
thus be operationalized through micro-discourse features such as gambits (Færch
and Kasper 1982) and minimal responses like ‘uh huh’ (Gardner 1997). McCarthy
(2003: 60), for instance, insists on the integrative nature of phatic talk, discernible
in nonminimal response tokens which “may appear to exist at the margins of
big talk, and these tokens may indeed be very ‘small’, but their role in the dis-
course is anything but small or marginal”. In other words, phaticity can interpolate
transactionally-focused episodes in the form of utterances, particles, paralan-
guage, and more. This interwoven relational work, as well as trademark instances
of phatic communion, falls under the term ‘phatic communication’.
More recently, phatic work has also received attention in electronically-
mediated communication (e.g., Walther 1996; Darics 2013; Kulkarni 2014). Phatic-
ity takes on particular relevance in digital media: in Miller’s (2008: 395) terms,
these phatically-charged mediums are symptomatic of an emerging “phatic cul-
ture” in which “content is not king, but keeping ‘in touch’ is”. This research has
moreover highlighted that even through written electronic mediums, phaticity is
often conveyed through nonverbal means, or “new media gestures” (Schandorf
2013), such as emoticons and typographic alterations (Derks, Bos and von Grum-
bkow 2007; Maíz-Arévalo 2015). Medium affordances both influence and respond
to “phatic Internet” tendencies (Yus 2017). WhatsApp, for instance, provides an
appropriate platform by facilitating emoji use and offering written and audio mes-
sages alongside phone calls, thereby allowing users to simultaneously maintain
and control (i.e., not impose) contact.
While phatic communication is characterized by propositionally irrelevant
content (Yus 2017), meaning still has a part to play. Far from being random, “the
semantic meaning of the tokens selected in phatic communion is indeed relevant
to the nature of interaction” (Laver 1975: 222) in that (a) themes and manner of
appropriate expression are constrained and (b) it contains ample “indexical mean-
ing” (Laver 1975: 222) or “social information” (Schneider 1987: 251). Schneider
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 209

argues that appropriate topic selection and sequencing requires sociopragmatic

competence. This includes knowledge of phatic expression’s “very delicately bal-
anced double function” of “asserting ties of union or social solidarity, but simulta-
neously limiting their strength” (Laver 1975: 225). Put another way, phaticity is not
only a tool for bonding by which speakers become closer and closer with every
utterance – rather, in Brown and Levinson’s (1978) terms, phatic talk responds
to positive and negative face concerns. Ostensibly, engaging in phatic communi-
cation attends to positive face, or desire for involvement, but its non-committal
character also displays negative face concerns for independence. Small talk, for
instance, entails conversing precisely on relatively impersonal and unobtrusive
matters to respect an interlocutor’s psychological space (Schneider 1987).
These perspectives underscore the role of semantic content in constructing
and interpreting social meaning in phatic communication – by responding to
relationally-tied face concerns, it indexes relative identity and affinity. Laver
(1975: 223) argues that social norms constrain users’ phatic approach options, and
that by acting in accordance with or contrary to these norms, interactants’ choice
“is indexically significant for staking claims about solidarity and relative social sta-
tus”. Laver’s account describes these options as ‘phatic tokens’, a concept further
defined in the following section.

2.2 Phatic tokens

As mentioned above, Laver contends that guiding norms make certain phatic
options more or less available to interactants according to their relative status
or relationship. These options, conceptualized as phatic tokens, consist of small,
generally utterance-level units of phatic talk serving iniciatory, propitiatory, and
exploratory relational functions in conversation.
Laver’s model of phatic tokens emphasizes that the balance between solidarity
and independence shifts according to the participants’ relationship, and also that
its fulcrum is not predetermined, but negotiated within and across interactional
encounters. To view this negotiation, he focuses on turn-initial tokens opening
a conversation or instigating its conclusion. He contends that phatic remarks, of
which he identifies three types, make deictic reference to locally or personally rel-
evant information. According to Laver’s (1975: 223) projections, these phatic mark-
ers may fall into the following categories:
1. Neutral tokens (NT)
– Example: “Nice weather we’re having.”
– Description: tokens related to aspects equally relevant or impersonal to
the interactants
210 Bethany Aull

2. Personal tokens
a. Other-oriented (O-PT)
– Example: “How is your family doing?”
– Description: tokens involving aspects leaning into the addressee’s
“psychological space”
b. Self-oriented (S-PT)
– Example: “I’m exhausted!”
– Description: tokens pertaining to aspects more personally relevant to
the momentary addresser

In spoken interaction, nevertheless, verbally-projected content need not be the

only deictic resource: nonverbal behavior, such as prosody, may send similarly rel-
evant signals. Wichmann (2004), for instance, has identified these three orienta-
tional categories in the intonational profiles of ‘please’ requests. She observed that
neutrality was conveyed through level intonation, a hearer-oriented approach took
an intonational rise, and a falling intonation typically signalled self-orientation.
In addition to pragmalinguistic options, Laver stresses the influence of the
relationship between the participants. He conceptualizes interactant relationships
particularly in terms of social distance and relative power, found to considerably
impact politeness and speech act realization (Brown and Levinson 1978). Laver
identifies the following three main combinations of psychological relationships
(e.g., as constructed between the interactants, often constrained by status dif-
ference) and social relationships (i.e., institutional, cultural, or other externally
imposed hierarchies) between interactants.
1. Solidary
– Example: family members
– Description: psychologically close status equals (low distance, low differ-
ence in relative power)
2. Nonsolidary
a. Level
– Example: acquaintances
– Description: psychologically distant status equals (high distance, low
power difference)
b. Status differential
– Example: an employer and an employee
– Description: superior, inferior (high distance, high power difference)
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 211

According to Laver, conversational participants formulate their initial approach

based on knowledge of (1) current social and psychological standing with the
addressee; (2) range of options for ‘unmarked’ or ‘marked’ conversation initiation
and their implications; and (3) the desired approach for entering into the inter-
action. This knowledge informs the illocutionary choice made by the presumed
speaker, while the listener’s interpretation is similarly edified by her/his own
understanding of these conditions.
Laver’s typology outlines how the interactants’ relationship may dictate which
phatic token categories are expected in an opening turn. Table 1 compiles his
match-up.

Table 1. ‘Permitted’ and marked phatic tokens (adapted from Laver (1975))
Relationship
Nonsolidary Nonsolidary
Nonsolidary differential (lower- differential (higher-
Solidary level status initiator) status initiator)

Token Neutral
type
Self- ✪ ✪
oriented

Other- ✪ ✪
oriented

In this table, the checked boxes represent expected or unmarked token

options for the conversation initiator in relation to her/his interlocutor and the
situation, while the stars signal the marked approaches. Thus, for example, the
approaches expected of a lower-status individual would differ from those of a sta-
tus superior. While users may employ ‘forbidden’ categories, their marked sta-
tus implies that “such contraventions have special social significance for indexical
attitudes about the status relationship between the two speakers, and sometimes
about the solidarity factor of their relationship” (Laver 1975: 224).
To focus on a delineated set of phenomena, the study presented here considers
just two of the relationship groups mentioned: solidary relationships (here, friends
and family members) and nonsolidary status-differential relationships (between a
teacher and her students). Against the backdrop of mobile communication, this
paper fixes on the intersection of emojis and phatic token use across these differ-
ent relational dynamics.
212 Bethany Aull

2.3 Conceptualizing emojis

Emojis (e.g., , ) and their precursor the emoticon (e.g., ;), :P), have drawn the
attention of theorists and researchers for their notable import in electronically-
mediated communication. More than repeating what is verbally encoded as a sort
of ‘communicative overkill’, emojis and emoticons may fulfill a variety of their
own additive pragmatic functions (Dresner and Herring 2010; Yus 2014; Sampi-
etro 2016). For instance, based on a speech act framework, Dresner and Her-
ring (2010) have argued that emoticons can act to signal emotions, nonemotional
meanings conventionally mapped onto facial expressions, or illocutionary force.
Emoticons also serve interpersonal and politeness functions, such as in mitigating
potentially face-threatening acts (Dresner and Herring 2010). In blog comments,
Kavanagh (2016) has identified uses of emoticons alongside both positive and neg-
ative politeness strategies (Brown and Levinson 1978). Other research has pointed
to emoticons’ and emojis’ role in discourse organization (Provine, Spencer and
Mandell 2007; Baron and Ling 2011), paralanguage (Derks, Bos and von Grum-
bkow 2007; Alcántara Plá 2014), identity and social marking (Zappavigna 2012),
expressing intentions (Dresner and Herring 2010), and guiding interpretation
(Yus 2014). In many cases, these aspects contribute to phatic communication, such
as in WhatsApp where users favor emojis for relational as opposed to proposi-
tional purposes (Al Rashdi 2015; Pérez-Sabater 2019).
As phatic markers, emojis also adopt a deictic element, likewise a character-
istic of longer phatic utterances (Laver 1975; Padilla Cruz 2004). Emojis may con-
tribute to indexical information which is otherwise aided by nonverbal behavior
in spoken interaction. Per Laver’s classification, these tokens may point to aspects
of the interactional setting (including the illocutionary plane) or to the partic-
ipants. Yus (2014) describes emojis’ inference-guiding functions which may be
summarized in terms of their indexical direction: towards the propositional con-
tent, the participants (sender or receiver(s)), or the very act of connecting between
participants.
All this research recognizes emojis’ contribution to communication, empha-
sizing that “emojis are not redundant or irrelevant. On the contrary, they play a
wide range of possible roles or functions that aid in making the accompanying text
more relevant to the addressee user” (Yus 2014: 526). Still, their particular char-
acter and use have yet to be rigorously examined and conceptualized. The study
presented in the following section aims to fill a portion of this gap by addressing
emojis’ role in phatic communication.
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 213

3. The study

3.1 Research questions

The current exploratory study compares phatic uses of emojis in natural What-
sApp communications to Laver’s framework of phatic tokens. A twofold research
question drove this inquiry: How adequate are Laver’s (1975) descriptions of phatic
token norms in accounting for phatic emoji behavior between (1) solidary and
status-differential relationships, and (2) interactants of differing relative status?

3.2 Data collection

To answer these questions, the study collected a corpus of 26 authentic, one-on-

one WhatsApp chats taking place over at least nine months between October 2015
and November 2017. Each of these private interactions involved the researcher,
at the time a teacher of English as a foreign language. The conversations took
place prior to any intention of analysis, thus eliminating observational pressure
on either side, and participant consent was obtained posteriorly. In total, the cor-
pus contained 22,258 words and emojis, averaging at about 428 words and emo-
jis per chat (as these full transactions contained several individual conversations,
‘chat’ refers to the totality of these exchanges). The total emoji-per-word average
was 3.4%, though when divided into transmissions – the content submitted by one
click on ‘send’ – an average of 62% of the transmissions contained an emoji.
Because the data involved one-on-one chats with the researcher, the partici-
pants fell into two groups according to their relationship with the former: (1) the
status-differential group and (2) the solidary group. The status-differential group
consisted of a status superior, i.e., the teacher (in this case also the researcher –
here labeled ‘TR’), and participants of lower relative power, i.e., the students
(abbreviated ‘ST’). There were sixteen students in total, including ten teenagers
and six adults over age 18, comprised of ten female and six male students. All
were studying for a B1 certification exam in Spain and had similar levels of Eng-
lish, while the instructor was proficient in their native language, Spanish. The sec-
ond group of subjects, here identified as the solidary group, included ten friends
and siblings of the researcher, all females in a close status-equal relationship with
the latter. In the conversation segments presented in the following section, the
researcher appears as ‘R’ and the friends/family members as ‘F’. All of the verbal
exchanges took place in English and/or Spanish, of which all solidary participants
were native or proficient speakers. All participant names appearing in the next
section’s chat samples are pseudonyms.
214 Bethany Aull

From this conversational data, the study took two analytical approaches: a
qualitative, close-up analysis to identify the emoji usage, and a contrastive and
statistical quantitative analysis. The analysis section below presents the findings,
first laying out the methodological procedures used in coding and examining the
three token types by way of specific examples from across the communications.
The second subsection offers graphs and quantitative summaries of the overall
token approaches within and across the groups, noting their statistically signifi-
cant similarities and differences, consolidating thus the contrasting behaviors and
their implications.

4. Analysis and findings

4.1 Qualitative analysis

As phatic talk “is a matter of degree” (Žegarac and Clark 1999: 37), it is often elu-
sive to clear-cut and monofunctional identification. To identify tokens pertaining
to the ‘primarily phatic’ end of this spectrum, the analysis leaned on (a) definitions
of phatic talk and (b) conversation analytical methods of looking to the partici-
pants’ case-by-case interpretations as manifested in their responses. As previously
defined, a phatic token used in conversation would indicate, foremost, that the
user wishes to instigate, maintain, or inoffensively exit contact with the receiver.
Consequently, the exact content is dispensable, because (a) it is already known
by the conversational participants (Padilla Cruz 2007) and/or (b) another phatic
token could effectively take its place (Žegarac and Clark 1999).
As Laver’s account tacitly relates tokens to utterances, some boundaries were
drawn to define token units for the purpose of this analysis. In framing emojis as
phatic tokens, this study considered three possible units, all of which emerged in
the data.
1. Emoji + verbal encoding = phatic token
– Example: have a nice day
– Description: emoji(s) and verbal phrase(s) working together in producing
a coherent phatic token
2. Emoji = phatic particle (assigned full token value)
– Example: I’ve sent it!
– Description: emojis, here referred to as phatic particles, performing a
phatic function on their own though they appear alongside, and relate to,
a mainly non-phatic expression (in the example, “I’ve sent it” would con-
stitute the informative, non-phatic element)
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 215

3. Emoji = phatic token

– Example: -See you then!
–
– Description: emojis forming complete and independent phatic tokens (as
with the conventionalized farewell kiss emoji in the example)

With the chats converted into a text file, this study’s analysis began by coding
the emojis which fell into the three main token types: neutral, self-oriented, and
other-oriented. Considerable margin was left for ambiguities – they were coded
as ambiguous, but differentially tagged according to their possible interpretations.
Admittedly, the emojis’ meaning in context depends on their users’ understand-
ings. The coding phase therefore sought to glean each emoji’s referential direction
from surrounding text or turns. Only the emojis figured in the final calculations,
each counting as a separate token. Example (1) displays a conversational sample
between a friend (F) and the researcher (R) illustrating this procedure. The num-
bers following the speaker abbreviation (e.g., F1, R2) identify the turn number in
the sequence. The attributed token type appears in brackets following each emoji
or group of emojis.
(1) R1: ok I’ll look it up [NT]
F2: Ok great
F3: I’m exhausted [S-PT]
R4: uff!! to make you all the more grateful to reach your final destination

While the verbal content is clearly informative, the emojis in turn R1 are coded as
neutral phatic particles: rather than serve the transactional function or enter the
psychological space of one participant, they contribute to affective enhancement
in the immediate conversational sphere. Interpreting the smiling emoji as phatic
also implies that its principal aim is not to inform the receiver of the sender’s
emotion: it is taken here to achieve such enhancement firstly by the mere act of
engaging in emoji use. In other words, enclosing an emoji of little/no proposi-
tional import signals the user’s desire to be on ‘emoji-sending terms’ with the
receiver and thus projects solidarity. However the emojis in R1 may also display
(socially expected) willingness and awareness of the recipient’s concern for the
sender’s negative face. In this way they may also serve as a form of polite redress to
the promise or offer, but the main perlocutionary intent is encoded in the verbal
phrase (“I’ll look it up”) and only supplemented by the emojis. On the other hand,
the emojis in F3 are tagged ‘S-PT’ based on their replication of the surrounding,
explicitly self-referential text (“I’m exhausted”).
216 Bethany Aull

Finally, emojis primarily serving other functions, such as politeness, lexical

encoding (e.g., a sun emoji replacing the word ‘sunny’), or indicating illocutionary
force or intensity, were tagged accordingly and set aside. While emoji use was often
multifunctional, the analysis attempted to target those uses which were essen-
tially phatic. It should be noted, however, that the researcher was the only coder,
a point mentioned again in the article’s closing. From these classifications, each
emoji usage was counted within its participant group and statistically contrasted.
The later quantitative analysis section describes this process in more detail.
The following subsections, divided into the neutral, other-oriented and self-
oriented phatic token categories, delve into some samples from the data. A brief
subsection also addresses a few cases of ambiguous token codings. These sections
provide illustrative excerpts from the coding phase.

4.1.1 Neutral tokens

As previously mentioned, neutral phatic approaches involve topics that are (a)
impersonal or (b) of equal relevance to both interactants. Recall that in Laver’s
typology, a neutral approach constitutes the universally unmarked option. In
the analyzed conversations, neutral phatic emojis were not the most prominent
type, as shown later in the quantitative analysis section. However, they were pro-
duced by all participant groups. The following exchange between a friend and the
researcher displays neutral token use which came after a brief political discussion.
(2) F1: You have a point. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. A ver a ver que pasa.
[NT] [We’ll see what happens.]
R2: [NT]
R3: [NT]
F4: [NT]
F5: [NT]
This example is one of few segments where emojis stood alone across several
turns. The eyes emojis in turn F1 and R2 allude to the verbal expression of
seeing what will happen, placing them in the neutral realm of the communicative
exchange. The subsequent emojis (R3, F4, and F5) introduce an affective element,
but remain somewhat impersonal, perhaps partly because there is no verbal acti-
vation of personal reference. This raises a question which exceeds this study’s
scope, but might be of interest: how much emojis’ indexicality relies on contextual,
pragmatic, or lexical support (though not necessarily verbal, as emojis can encode
varying degrees of lexical content). With minimal cues, phatic emojis might tend
to remain in the neutral category. Regardless, the interactants appear to display
their mutual alignment and keep the channel open through symmetry in (1) their
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 217

neutral type of approach, (2) the level of engagement (i.e., involvement) conveyed,
and (3) the act of using emojis in their messages.
As previously mentioned, a neutral approach can afford psychological space
to the participants and is thus conducive to status-differential phatic exchanges.
By covering “emotionally unassertive ground”, neutral tokens allow a user to “ful-
fill social obligations of pacific, cooperative behavior, but they also significantly
protect the psychological privacy of the speaker” (Laver 1975: 225). Some of the
most common and easily identified neutral tokens were adjuncts to routines or
conventional phrases, such as arose in the following status-differential exchange
between teacher (TR) and student (ST).
(3) TR1: Test 3 will close tomorrow (Sunday) at 11 pm. Good luck!
Have a good weekend! [O-PT]
ST2: Okay thanks [NT]
TR3: Okay [NT]
In terms of conversation sequentiality, the emojis in this example appear to mark
transition relevance places (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974), inviting follow-
ing turns. Their positioning and reciprocity also resemble routine well-wishing
and thanks: TR1’s verbal part initiates a conventional phatic closing, which calls
for the second pair part in ST2, and the (optional) third-turn receipt in TR3.
While the emojis appear to represent affectivity, the recurrence of this exchange
structure in the data suggests that such attitudinal content is socially expected in
this WhatsApp environment. Moreover, the (verbal and nonverbal) phatic part
in TR1 takes an other-oriented approach, while the response tokens are coded as
neutral – instead of pursuing the personal topic or returning the tidings, they sup-
port the conversational conventions of acknowledgement and thanks. However
the emojis render the tokens in ST2 and TR3 nonminimal “yes-plus” responses –
that is, they do “more than satisfy the minimal requirements of acknowledg-
ing receipt, showing understanding of the incoming talk, and keeping the back-
channel open” (McCarthy 2003: 43). With “Okay (thanks)” providing confirma-
tion, the emojis lend additional phatic effects, such as (1) fulfillment of socially
expected positivity/friendliness in conversational closings and (2) reinforcement
of the relational alignment through reciprocal emoji use.

4.1.2 Other-oriented personal tokens

The data revealed a significant amount of personal, other-referential emoji uses.
These tended to reflect positivity (e.g., joy, approval, affirmation, humor), as in the
other-oriented smiling face in Example (3) (TR1). However, negative emojis also
served phatic purposes like commiseration in Example (4).
218 Bethany Aull

(4) R1: If it’s bad, your doctor might send you there for a scan anyway
F2: True true
F3: Damn it
R4: [O-PT]
While sad and angry emojis were much less common than positive and jocular
ones, they appeared most often for this commiserative function. In the status-
differential communications, they were also used by the teacher to empathize with
a student, but never the other way around.
Within the status-differential exchanges, other-oriented tokens were generally
invoked by the higher-status instructor. By Laver’s account, only the teacher would
be able to use other-oriented personal tokens without drawing attention to the
fact. The following example from the status-differential group resembles the pro-
totypical conversational openings he describes, in which the phatic token allegedly
allows for a smooth and favorable entry into the posterior illocutionary act.
(5) TR1: Hey Carmen, I hope you’re enjoying the feria! [O-PT] Remember that
moodle test 5 closes this Sunday at 11 p.m.

Here, the address and verbal phatic content (“I hope you’re enjoying the feria!”)
initiates the turn, occupying the slot often reserved for interpersonal work
(McCarthy 2003). The emoji, coded as other-oriented, contributes retrospectively
to the phatic token. However its interim, post-punctuation position suggests that
it may also serve to consolidate the verbal part of the phatic utterance and to tran-
sition between the two aspects of the verbal content, one interpersonal and the
other transactional. This may be of increased importance in WhatsApp because
synchronicity is not guaranteed, so both content components are deployed in the
same transmission instead of awaiting an intervening response.
The conventionalized use of the emoji in the previous example may render it a
somewhat neutralized other-approach. In contrast, examples like (6) below show
more effusive and emotionally-engaged approaches.
(6) ST1: I wish I approve it
ST2: Thanks!!!!
TR3: Great, I’m sure you passed. [O-PT]
The teacher frequently used emojis for congratulations and encouragement.
These uses, like in Example (6), appeared to express more proximity than con-
ventional other-oriented approaches (e.g., Example (5)). This suggests that each
orientation presents a range of (in this case, unmarked) options manifesting
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 219

more or less solidarity. The use of multiple and/or repeated emojis can also con-
tribute to the intensity or proximity they convey (McCarthy 2003: 40).
Other-oriented phatic tokens are supposedly marked for the students because
they invade the status superior’s psychological space. Nevertheless they did appear
once in a student’s message.
(7) ST1: I can do today, now?
TR2: Of course! I’m reminding you because the test closes at 11 pm.
ST3: Ooooohhhhh
ST4: Thankkkssss
ST5: I love u
TR6: Haha! glad that was a happy ending. [NT]
ST7: [O-PT]
The above segment followed a misunderstanding regarding a class assignment.
Relieved at not having missed the deadline, the teenage student unexpectedly
writes “I love u” in ST5, drastically shifting to a close alignment. The teacher’s
response, on the other hand, neither rejects the exuberance nor engages in the
same level of closeness. Instead, it relegates it back to shared neutral ground by
referring to the communicative event of misunderstanding rather than to the
other or to the student-initiated act of closeness. The teacher then refrains from
taking up the solidary emoji use in ST7 by producing no follow-up. Thus while the
student’s move may catalyze some negotiation (for example, the upgraded degree
of engagement in the teacher’s neutral emoji in TR6), the participants do not con-
verge styles: the student introduces a socially marked stance, while the instructor
reasserts the status-differential norm.

4.1.3 Self-oriented personal tokens

The personalized alternative to other-orientation involves reference to aspects
within the addresser’s personally relevant domain. While Laver describes self-
oriented tokens as available to solidary participants, they occurred less frequently
than other-alignment in the friend-researcher interactions. Exchange (8) below
displays one example.
(8) F1: Ok well let me know time you are thinking as if today is anything to go by I
could be anywhere hehe
F2: [S-PT]
R3: haha did you end up at the beach unexpectedly? Cool beans [O-PT]
F4: No beach … As need to book flights and clean the apartment .. Bummer.
220 Bethany Aull

This segment exemplifies a phatic interruption (F2, R3, F4) of a plan-making

exchange (partially appearing in F1). However the non-phatic content in F1 pro-
jects self-orientation onto the emojis in F2 – that is, the verbal utterance guides
the receiver’s interpretation of the emojis’ indexicality. The emojis in F2 evince
additional meanings, i.e., that the unpredictability alluded to in F1 involved an
impromptu beach trip. However these particles contribute to an open, jocular
interactional style which animates more than it assists the arrangement-making
business. The second-pair part (R3) takes up the personal approach by continuing
in the other’s domain. This response type was typical following self-referencing
tokens – in this data, self-oriented turns always preceded other-oriented or neu-
tral tokens. Moreover, while the verbal exchange in this excerpt is significant, the
support lent by the emojis in both turns suggests parallel reinforcement of this
interactional style. The emojis provide tools for the users “to say more and choose
response tokens that orientate affectively toward their conversational partners and
project and consolidate interactional and relational bonds” (McCarthy 2003: 43).
In short, both the verbal and nonverbal forms of this exchange’s phatic elements
reflect and sustain the solidarity between the participants.
As with friends, self-oriented tokens would allegedly be available to lower-
status individuals in a hierarchical relationship. Nevertheless, they could emit dif-
ferent levels of personalization in response to various factors, such as the context
or topic of the exchange. The segment below comes from a serious conversation
in which the student felt she had let the teacher down after receiving a favor.
(9) TR1: I know you’re sorry, don’t worry. What’s important is to learn how to
organize yourself so that you can deal with it. [NT, O-PT?]
ST2: Thanks for understand me
ST3: [S-PT]
In turn TR1, the teacher’s stern enunciations and relatively impersonal emojis
(here coded as ambiguous, potentially neutral or other-oriented particles) work
to reinstate some distance. The student, incidentally the same who sought soli-
darity in Example (7), adopts a compatible stance through seemingly submissive
self-orientation. The use of the bicep emoji in this example also draws attention to
its indexicality: while in all of the teacher’s transactions it evinced other-oriented
encouragement, the student in Example (9) uses it to refer to her own perse-
verance or promise to do better. The serious tone of this interaction, therefore,
would appear to discourage her from attempting marked solidarity – rather, she
maintains a more humble, conciliatory role which seems to minimize closeness
without abandoning it altogether. The contrast between Examples (7) and (9) fur-
thermore suggests that emotional, situational, or topical extremity may be more
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 221

likely to produce marked solidarity, while more temperate exchanges between

status-differential individuals preserve an unmarked stance. This may be coher-
ent, too, with prior associations drawn between formulaic linguistic and paralin-
guistic patterns and neutral orientations, and more original uses with greater
emotional conveyance (Wichmann 2004). Here both the emojis’ orientation and
degree of personalization send signals establishing and reinforcing the relation-
ship’s momentary standing.
According to Laver, a lower-status individual using the available self-oriented
approach, as in the previous example, would manifest that the interactional rela-
tionship remained within ‘default’ boundaries. Conversely, a higher-status per-
son’s reference to self would signal a shift in this dynamic. There was one such
instance, seen below, in which the instructor used a laughing-at-self emoji.
(10) TR1: woops, wrong Marta. Sorry!!
TR2: [S-PT]
ST3: No problem [NT]
Turn TR1 offers an explicit apology for a misdirected message, while the emoji
in TR2 represents the instructor laughing at herself. Particles of amusement also
occurred as laughing-at-other, but only in the solidary group. In the status-
differential interaction above, this marked use may temporarily suspend the rela-
tional hierarchy: by practicing debasement, the teacher de-emphasizes the power
difference with the effect of “[inviting] the listener to a momentary solidarity
in which the … status differential is tacitly acknowledged as irrelevant” (Laver
1975: 224). By promoting proximity, the teacher’s use of a supposedly marked
token acts similarly to the student’s marked usage in Example (7). In the above
Example (10), the student in ST3 acknowledges the apology and reciprocates with
a laughing emoji. This use is interpreted as neutral because, like the second and
third turns in Example (3), the ST3 token fills the second pair slot created by the
apology. This follow-up amusement particle acknowledges the move towards sol-
idarity by concurring with the mistake’s laughability.

4.1.4 Ambiguous tokens

As stated, several emojis were interpreted as phatic but indexically ambiguous,
though their potential meanings were significant to the analysis. The following
examples each reflect two possible orientations.
(11) TR1: You should be so proud of your achievement – even more so because you
did it with everything else in your busy life! Well done [O-PT]
ST2: Thank you very much!!!!! [S-PT, NT?]
222 Bethany Aull

In this exchange, the teacher makes personal reference to the student by offering
congratulations. The direction of the student’s contribution in ST2, however, is less
clear. If the emojis in ST2 refer to the congratulations, to the act of giving them,
or to the act of intensifying them with emojis, the approach would be considered
neutral. However, the possibility remains that the student instead expresses her
attitude towards the event, in which case the student’s usage would be marked. The
same event of enthusiastic congratulations produced a similarly ambiguous inter-
change elsewhere, seen below.
(12) TR1: Have a great summer and I wish you all the best! [O-PT]
ST2: [S-PT, O-PT?] I wish you all the best too!!
Here, the instructor congratulates and takes leave of the student in a semi-routine
way in TR1. In ST2, the position of the clapping hands in the student’s response
suggests they relate to the congratulations rather than to the well-wishing, but it
is unclear whether they applaud the student’s achievement, the teacher’s role in
it, or the mutual effort. As in the previous example, each participant consents to
increased solidarity, though its markedness is somewhat ambiguous. This off-the-
record approach, nonetheless, is significant and exploitable – it renders the other-
reference less negative-face-threatening and the self-congratulations less boastful
by preserving each interpretation’s deniability. In Examples (11) and (12) alike,
both interpretations and both interactants seem to work towards a stance of prox-
imity licensed by the preceding event and the teacher’s other-oriented enthusiasm.

4.2 Quantitative analysis

Based on the case-by-case categorization of phatic emojis illustrated in the pre-

vious section, the tokens were counted by the number of individual emojis rep-
resenting each token type. Looking first at the conversations between solidary
members, Figure 1 below lays out each type’s average occurrence.
This chart combines the friends’/family members’ and researcher’s emoji use
because as solidary participants, they would be expected to have the same phatic
token options. It shows that even though none of the phatic approaches were
marked for the interactants, they overwhelmingly preferred other-orientedness
(in black), followed by neutrality (in blue). However, some contrast emerges upon
separating the researcher from the other interactants, visible in Figure 2.
The greatest similarity between the friends, represented on the left, and the
researcher, on the right, was the use of neutral tokens (22.5% versus 28.2%). While
both gave considerable preference to other-oriented tokens (researcher 55.3% and
friends 40.8%), they differed in self-reference (4.4% as opposed to 16%).
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 223

Figure 1. Emoji use in solidary interactions

Figure 2. Friend vs. researcher emoji use in solidary interactions

The same researcher in her role as teacher, however, showed slightly different
token-type usage when addressing students. In Figure 3, the graph on the left dis-
plays this interactant’s emoji distribution when addressing her students (in the
status-differential interactions), as opposed to the right-hand graph portraying
her use with friends/family (in the solidary exchanges).
224 Bethany Aull

Figure 3. Teacher (status-differential) vs. researcher (solidary) emoji use

This view shows that in solidary interactions, self-oriented tokens (in orange)
were only slightly more likely (4.4% as researcher and 1.5% as teacher). Other-
oriented tokens, on the other hand, were considerably less frequent (55.3% as
researcher versus 72.7% as teacher), interestingly coinciding with an increased
preference for neutrality in solidary exchanges (22.5% as researcher as opposed to
7.8% as teacher). Possible causes for this seemingly paradoxical behavior are men-
tioned later in the discussion section.
The largest contrast becomes apparent within the status-differential group. The
graphs below present the students’ distribution alongside that of the instructor.

Figure 4. Student vs. teacher emoji use in status-differential interactions

 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 225

As seen in the right-side graph, the vast majority of the teacher’s emoji use
was other-oriented, as before, though to an even greater extent. However there
was a much lower use of a neutral approach, and virtually no self-oriented tokens.
The students, represented on the left, showed a strikingly different distribution
from the teacher and from the researcher and friends. Rather than replicating the
high other-orientedness of their interlocutor, they used neutral and self-oriented
tokens in similar measure (36.1% neutral to 30.6% self-oriented), but eschewed
other-orientation.
Figure 5 reconstrues this data to represent the instructor’s and students’
deployment of marked versus unmarked approaches.

Figure 5. Markedness of student vs. teacher emoji use in status-differential interactions

This distribution differs slightly from Figure 4 because some of the ambiguous
cases fell into the unmarked category regardless of their interpretation. Visible in
the left-side graph, 75% of the students’ emojis were identified as unmarked phatic
tokens. In addition to tokens respectively identified as neutral or self-oriented,
the proportion representing unmarked tokens includes uses tagged as ambigu-
ous between these two unmarked options. As students used fewer emojis over-
all than the instructor and rarely used multiple emojis in one transmission, the
11% of marked usage accounts for only one message, seen in Example (7) with
the repeated kiss emojis. The 8.3% in black distinguishes the singular case of the
ambiguous applause (Example (12)) due to its potentially marked or unmarked
readings. Thus on the graph, it would appear that the low-status individuals more
frequently resorted to marked strategies; however, this was only true for one or
two of the sixteen students. As indicated on the right, more than 80% of the
instructor’s emojis were unmarked phatic tokens. In fact, the 1.6% sliver of marked
token use comes from the one instance of the teacher laughing at her mistake
226 Bethany Aull

(Example (10)). Overall, the students and the teacher tended to use emojis in
phatic expressions which lay within their allegedly unmarked options.
Though based on small sample sizes, statistical calculations using t-tests fur-
ther illuminate the groups’ distinct emoji use. Within the solidary group, friend
and researcher phatic emoji use was similar in terms of emoji-per-word average,
as was their use of neutral and other-oriented personal tokens. Yet they differed
significantly in their use of self-oriented tokens (p = .0315), suggesting that the
researcher’s self-reference avoidance was part of a particular interactional style.
Given this idiosyncrasy, too, it was helpful to remove the researcher by comparing
the friends/family members from the solidary group to the status-differential par-
ticipants. This revealed that though the teacher’s use of self-oriented tokens dif-
fered significantly from that of the students (p = .0479), when comparing just the
students and the friends, they were not remarkably different in their proportions
of neutral or self-oriented use. On the other hand, the difference in other-oriented
token use between the students and the friends/family members was highly sig-
nificant (p = .0001).
Within the status-differential group, the teacher and students did not differ
greatly in their use of the neutral category or in their marked behavior. Also, even
though the teacher was evidently more verbose than the students and used more
emojis overall, the emoji-per-word average in the interactions was similar. Among
the students themselves, neither age nor gender emerged as a significant factor
in token type or emoji use overall. What stood out was that the teacher used sig-
nificantly more other-oriented emoji tokens than the students (p < .0001), and the
students used significantly more self-oriented ones (p = .0479). Given that the stu-
dents’ other-oriented token use differed significantly from that of both the instruc-
tor and the friends/family, social distance and/or power difference appear to have
played an influential role in phatic selection.
In summary, emoji use in solidary communications was heavily other-
oriented, with neutral tokens preferred over self-reference. In the nonsolidary dif-
ferential relationships, on the other hand, students balanced between neutral and
self-oriented approaches, while the teacher relied on other-oriented tokens most
of the time. The subsequent section takes up the implications of these results, as
well as those recounted in the previous analytical sections, to consider how they
respond to the research questions.
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 227

5. Discussion of findings

5.1 Findings summary

This inquiry has set out to test the descriptive power of Laver’s phatic token cate-
gories in WhatsApp emoji use, including the supposed ‘permitted’ and ‘forbidden’
categories between high- and low-status interactants. The first part of the research
question concerned the use of emojis for phatic behavior across the groups, that
is, between solidary and nonsolidary status-differential relationships. The findings
show that in both groups, emojis were used for phatic purposes at all stages of talk
and alongside other pragmatic aims. However, higher solidarity corresponded to a
broader range of token types, while status-differential interactants reflected more
constraints. Overall, when it was available, there was a preference for focusing on
the other, which is characteristic of phatic talk. Lower-status individuals, however,
notably disfavored this approach, hinting at an overarching norm at work.
The second part of the research question pertained to the status-differential
group, where there were indeed significant differences along status lines: students
and the instructor remained almost invariably within their expected types. Stu-
dents, for their part, gave similar preference to neutral and self-oriented
approaches, but generally avoided other-oriented tokens, as predicted by Laver’s
descriptions. Conversely, and also consistent with this model, the teacher used
notably more other-oriented personal tokens. The instructor also showed height-
ened preference for these personal tokens over neutral ones, even surpassing her
use of this approach in interactions with friends/family. The increased personal-
ization may have arisen in compensation for the lack of solidarity with students,
for example to downplay the hierarchical relationship in which the act of writing is
potentially threatening. Even when utilizing theoretically unmarked token types,
therefore, the teacher often deployed personalized, enthusiastic phatic emojis to
“facilitate momentary solidarity, and to minimize the relevance of the status dif-
ferential” (Laver 1975: 225). Both the teacher’s and the students’ minimal use of a
marked approach appeared to increase proximity. Overall, then, these WhatsApp
exchanges corroborated Laver’s description of norms and norm-breaking conse-
quences in solidary versus nonsolidary interactants’ phatic options.
While these initial results are suggestive, however, some methodological
caveats inhibit their generalizability and would require attention in future
research. For instance, additional coders in the analytical phase would strengthen
the emoji tags’ validity and could aid in parsing ambiguously-coded tokens. Also,
while allowing internal comparability within the data, the researcher as a constant
factor limits the study’s scope and should be contrasted with a greater number of
participants. This study also included no exchanges between male peers or involv-
228 Bethany Aull

ing male superiors in status-differential relationships. This point demands atten-

tion since women-only and men-only WhatsApp interactions have been found to
differ in emoji usage (Al Rashdi 2015; Pérez-Sabater 2019).
Furthermore, the status-differential relationships in this study involved the
additional factors of cultural distance and language proficiency imbalance. As all
members conformed to the didactic expectation of communicating through the
target language (English), the teacher-as-expert and student-as-novice position-
ings may have contributed to the behavioral differences observed between the sol-
idary and status-differential groups. As this intercultural element was unessential
to identifying phatic approaches, replication studies could look instead at unicul-
tural teacher-student WhatsApp interactions.
At the same time, the disparate behaviors observed between the teacher and
students may prove even more significant given the aforementioned influences.
For instance, WhatsApp users often approximate their communicative approach
to that of their interlocutors (Siebenhaar 2017), and foreign language students
may be even more likely to adopt their teacher’s style given the latter’s status and
target language proficiency. Even so, the participants in this study overwhelm-
ingly avoided the teacher’s most prominent approach, that of other-orientation.
On another account, foreign language users may also be expected to rely more
heavily on nonverbal cues than when using their native language. While this study
cannot capture how the student participants’ emoji use may have differed when
conversing in their L1, it nonetheless shows that the students, overall and indi-
vidually, used fewer emojis than the instructor. Future research could explore this
point as well to determine whether this may be connected to overall phatic token
use; that is, whether more phatic emojis correspond to greater phatic work, and to
what extent this difference holds across several teacher-student interactions.
As regards the adopted framework, Laver’s model also has limitations in
accounting for all phatic communication. On the one hand, its focus on relation-
ship structure sidelines other influential factors such as situation or conversational
event or topic. Examples presented here reflected high variability along these lines,
for instance in the different phatic approaches employed along with a reprimand
(Example (9)) versus encouragement or congratulations (Example (6)). At the
same time, Laver’s rigid categories may overlook circumstantial relativity; that is,
specific token uses may be permitted in the framework, but they become marked
in the circumstances of their deployment, or vice versa. It is possible, for exam-
ple, that the circumstances of the teacher’s laughter-at-self in Example (10) set up a
context in which solidarity was socially acceptable or expected. Also, even within
theoretically unmarked approaches, the variation observed in this data suggests
that clear-cut categories may unrealistically confine descriptions of phatic token
usage. More flexible, gradient-admitting criteria may better capture the range of
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 229

phatic emojis’ level of engagement and personalization, and more nuanced, data-
driven conceptualizations and investigations could shed light on the forces moti-
vating users’ selection.
Though further research is needed to fully account for phatic communication
through emojis, the recurring differences observed here along socio-psychological
lines are suggestive of governing norms. These findings also contribute to the body
of research indicating that emojis are not redundant or insignificant: rather, they
respond to and enhance mediated communication.

5.2 Final remarks

Like utterances, emojis employed in phatic communication embody indexical

meaning which reflect and help construct corresponding social relationships. In
its own right, emoji use (and not just its content or that of accompanying text)
constitutes phatic communication. The act of sending and reciprocating messages
with emojis contributes to the social capital amassed by connectedness. Never-
theless, the WhatsApp users in this study displayed cognizance of nuanced dis-
tinctions in emojis’ indexical relativity and situational factors by deploying these
tokens in varying degrees of involvement and personalization. In general terms,
the participants’ phatic emoji behavior coincided with solidary versus status-
differential relationship structures, thus pointing to social norms at work as sug-
gested by Laver (1975). Relatedly, norm-deviance appeared to signal a desire to
produce additional interpersonal effects, i.e. increased solidarity. These findings
offer an initial look at the complexity underlying phatic communication norms as
manifested in the singular and significant nonverbal tokens of emojis.

References

Al Rashdi, Fathiya. 2015. “Forms and functions of emojis in WhatsApp interaction among
Omanis.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Georgetown University.
Alcántara Plá, Manuel. 2014. “Las Unidades discursivas en los mensajes instantáneos de wasap
[Discursive units in WhatsApp instant messages].” Estudios de Lingüística del Español
[Studies in Spanish Linguistics] 35: 223–242.
Baron, Naomi S., and Richard Ling. 2011. “Necessary smileys & useless periods.” Visible
Language 45(1–2): 46–67.
Brown, Penelope, and Steven C. Levinson. 1978. “Universals in language usage: Politeness
phenomena.” In Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction, ed. by
Esther N. Goody, 56–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coupland, Justine (ed.). 2000. Small Talk. London: Longman.
230 Bethany Aull

Coupland, Justine, Nikolas Coupland, and Jeffrey D. Robinson. 1992. “‘How are you?’:
Negotiating phatic communion.” Language in Society 21: 207–230.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500015268
Darics, Erika. 2013. “Non-verbal signalling in digital discourse: The case of letter repetition.”
Discourse, Context & Media 2(3): 141–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.07.002
Derks, Daantje, Arjan E. R. Bos, and Jasper von Grumbkow. 2007. “Emoticons and social
interaction on the Internet: The importance of social context.” Computers in Human
Behavior 23(1): 842–849. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2004.11.013
Dresner, Eli, and Susan C. Herring. 2010. “Functions of the nonverbal in CMC: Emoticons and
illocutionary force.” Communication Theory 20(3): 249–268.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468‑2885.2010.01362.x
Færch, Claus, and Gabriele Kasper. 1982. “Phatic, metalingual and metacommunicative
functions in discourse: Gambits and repairs.” In Impromptu Speech: A Symposium, ed. by
Nils Erik Enkvist, 71–103. Åbo: Åbo Akademi.
Gardner, Rod. 1997. “The listener and minimal responses in conversational interaction.”
Prospect 12(2): 12–32.
Goffman, Erving. 1955. “On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction.”
Psychiatry 18(3): 213–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1955.11023008
Kavanagh, Barry. 2016. “Emoticons as a medium for channeling politeness within American
and Japanese online blogging communities.” Language & Communication 48: 53–65.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2016.03.003
Kulkarni, Dipti. 2014. “Exploring Jakobson’s ‘phatic function’ in instant messaging
interactions.” Discourse & Communication 8(2): 117–136.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481313507150
Laver, John. 1975. “Communicative functions of phatic communion.” In Organization of
Behavior in Face-to-Face Interaction, ed. by Adam Kendon, Richard M. Harris, and
Mary R. Key, 215–238. The Hague: Mouton & Co.. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110907643.215
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1923. “The Problem of meaning in primitive languages.” In The
Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science
of Symbolism, ed. by Charles K. Ogden, John P. Postgate, and Ivor A. Richards, 451–510.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company.
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen. 2015. “Typographic alteration in formal computer-mediated
communication.” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 212: 140–145.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.11.311
McCarthy, Michael. 2003. “Talking back: ‘Small’ interactional response tokens in everyday
conversation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 36(1): 33–63.
https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327973RLSI3601_3
Miller, Vincent. 2008. “New media, networking and phatic culture.” Convergence 14(4):
387–400. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856508094659
Padilla Cruz, Manuel. 2004. “On the social importance of phatic utterances: Some
considerations for a relevance-theoretic approach.” In Current Trends in Intercultural,
Cognitive and Social Pragmatics, ed. by Pilar Garcés Conejos, Reyes Gómez Morón,
Lucía Fernández Amaya, and Manuel Padilla Cruz, 199–216. Sevilla: Intercultural
Pragmatics Research Group.
 A study of phatic emoji use in WhatsApp communication 231

Padilla Cruz, Manuel. 2007. “Metarepresentations and phatic utterances: A pragmatic proposal
about the generation of solidarity between interlocutors.” In Current Trends in Pragmatics,
ed. by Piotr Cap, and Joanna Nijakowska, 110–128. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing.
Pérez-Sabater, Carmen. 2019. “Emoticons in relational writing practices on WhatsApp: Some
reflections on gender.” Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions,
ed. by Patricia Bou-Franch, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 163–189. London: Palgrave
Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978‑3‑319‑92663‑6_6
Provine, Robert R., Robert J. Spencer, and Darcy L. Mandell. 2007. “Emotional expression
online: Emoticons punctuate website text messages.” Journal of Language and Social
Psychology 26(3): 299–307. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X06303481
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. 1974. “A simplest systematics for the
organization of turn-taking for conversation.” Language 50: 696–735.
https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1974.0010
Sampietro, Agnese. 2016. “Emoticonos y emojis: Análisis de su historia, difusión y uso en la
comunicación digital actual [Emoticons and emojis: Analysis of their history,
dissemination and use in current digital communication].” Unpublished PhD
dissertation, Universidad de Valencia.
Schandorf, Michael. 2013. “Mediated gesture: Paralinguistic communication and phatic text.”
Convergence 19(3): 319–344. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856512439501
Schneider, Klaus P. 1987. “Topic selection in phatic communication.” Multilingua 6(3): 247–256.
https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.1987.6.3.247
Siebenhaar, Beat. 2017. “Accommodation in WhatsApp communication.” Paper presented at
the 6th Conference on CMC and Social Media Corpora. University of Antwerp, 17–18
September 2017.
Walther, Joseph B. 1996. “Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and
hyperpersonal interaction.” Communication Research 23(1): 3–43.
https://doi.org/10.1177/009365096023001001
Wichmann, Anne. 2004. “The intonation of Please-requests: A corpus-based study.” Journal of
Pragmatics 36(9): 1521–1549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2004.03.003
Yus, Francisco. 2014. “Not all emoticons are created equal.” Linguagem em (Dis)curso 14(3):
511–529. https://doi.org/10.1590/1982‑4017‑140304‑0414
Yus, Francisco. 2017. “Contextual constraints and non-propositional effects in WhatsApp
communication.” Journal of Pragmatics 114: 66–86.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.04.003
Zappavigna, Michele. 2012. Discourse of Twitter and Social Media: How We Use Language to
Create Affiliation on the Web. London: Continuum.
Žegarac, Vladimir. 1998. “What is ‘phatic communication?’.” In Current Issues in Relevance
Theory, ed. by Villy Rouchota, and Andreas Jucker, 327–362. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.58.14zeg
Žegarac, Vladimir, and Billy Clark. 1999. “Phatic interpretations and phatic communication.”
Journal of Linguistics 35(2): 321–346. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226799007628
232 Bethany Aull

Address for correspondence

Bethany Aull
Universidad de Sevilla
Calle Virgen de la Oliva, 1, 7B
Seville, Seville 41011
Spain
bethanyaull@gmail.com

Biographical notes

Bethany Aull is currently pursuing a PhD in English Language Applied Linguistics at the Uni-
versity of Seville. A member of the Intercultural Studies on Pragmatics and Discourse Issues
research group and previously a language instructor, she focuses her studies on L2 pragmatics
and intercultural interaction, particularly through electronically-mediated communication. She
has presented on topics related to EFL learning and pragmatic aspects of emoji use.