In detail, for real communication, the specific form of verbal communication is spoken language, while in the network communication it becomes silent written words, or more precisely the word sequencing; the nonverbal communication elements in reality is laughing, crying and coughing etc, while in network communication it is emoticons that act as the same role. Below is the table which illustrates the relationships between real communication and network communication.
Verbal Communication Nonverbal Communication
Real Life Communication Spoken Language Laughing, Crying, Coughing, etc.
Online Communication Word Sequencing Emoticons
The table can be interpreted as: network communication is a mapping of real life communication. Now emoticons have developed into a more complex stage, but they still focus on imitating human face expressions and behavior. The position of the emoticons has not changed yet.
3.4 Expressives
According to Speech Act Theory, when people are making verbal communication, the words we speak in fact constitute our speech acts. Speech acts can be analyszd on three levels: Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.
Searle (1975) has set up the following classification of illocutionary speech acts:
1. assertives = speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition, e.g. reciting a creed
2. directives = speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g. requests, commands and advice
3. commissives = speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action, e.g. promises and oaths
4. expressives = speech acts that express the speaker's attitudes and emotions towards the proposition, e.g. congratulations, excuses and thanks
5. declarations = speech acts that change the reality in accord with the proposition of the declaration, e.g. baptisms, pronouncing someone guilty or pronouncing someone husband and wife.
(Searle, 1975, 345)
What is related to our study here is the expressives. It is a description of the state of mind of the speaker. And only the speaker can be responsible to it. (Whether it is true and false)
If emoticons are considered as carrier for people to express emotion, according to the Speech Act Theory, it shall only be classified as the expressives. This is consistent with the previous analysis. That is, emoticons as auxiliary means of communication can express the speaker’s mental state.
However, emoticons may have another use—to create a context. But this situation should be an application of the Pragmatic Strategies of expressives. In other words, the emoticons should be used to express emotion, but it is not always necessarily true that there is an emotion needed to be expressed. For example, here is an online chat record:
User A: Have you eaten your dinner? :)
User B: No. I am still working.
User A sent a lovely emoticon, but it seems to have no particular emotional meaning. Just to create a warm atmosphere for this chat. It can also be understood as the friendliness or concern of the sender to the recipient. In fact, you may feel that the greeting words by User A are very normal, nothing special, but after added with the emoticon :) to the end, a warm color has been added to this normal greeting immediately. To create a warm atmosphere by taking advantage of “greetings”, this is called Pragmatic Strategy.
In daily life, people love to add a smiley face to the end of text. In face-to-face communication, we can smile or adjust the speaking rate, pitch and tone to express our feeling; but in the network communication, only icy-cold words can be seen. In this case, the creation of a pleasant context becomes more important. This is now the mostly used application of emoticons.
3.5 The Generation Process 从语言学视角浅析网络表情符号英文论文(7):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_1062.html