Emoticon in Development of Virtual Graphic Emotionology

Emoticons are a vivid example of graphic emotionology in virtual communication. The interdisciplinary character of this research made it possible to combine linguistics with exact and natural sciences, including the young science of emotional artificial intelligence. Transmitting psycho-emotional experiences is important for effective virtual communication. Emotional pictography provides a more accurate understanding of the emotive content in a message. It relies on associative links between the image of a specific psycho-emotional state and its perception by a carrier of a specific linguistic culture. Basic emoticons are of universal nature, and internet users with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds tend to interpret them similarly. However, members of different ethno-linguistic communities sometimes decode the same emotions differently, which may lead to misunderstanding, as well as to serve as a marker on the friend – foe axis. Emoticons represent a clearly verified range of emotive states, which can be appealed to in virtual communication. The authors developed a classification of emoticons and proposed graphic emotionology as a new branch of linguistic semiotics. The metaphorical nature of the emoticon as a coded emotion with additional evaluative shades is revealed as a certain unified image or a complex of signs due to the accepted emotive norms of speech behavior. In addition, emoticons provide efficient compression during virtual communication. Intercultural virtual communication enriches the range of emoticons both linguistically and culturally, thus developing graphic emotionology internationally. Emoticons provide insight into the development of graphic emotionology.