Lorenzo Logi

UNSW Sydney | UNSW · School of the Arts and Media

This chapter introduces the framework for exploring emoji-text relations in social media that is used in this book. The chapter begins by explaining the discourse semantic systems that have been developed in Systemic Functional Linguistics for describing ideational, interpersonal, and textual meaning. This is in order to lay the foundation for expl...

This chapter focuses on the technical aspects of emoji, including how emoji are encoded and rendered for use in digital communication. The chapter explains how emoji are developed by the Unicode Consortium as well as considering the social implications of this process. Unicode characters, and emoji codepoints, modifiers, and sequences are explained...

This chapter explores the role of emoji in the negotiation of meaning in exchanges in TikTok comment feeds. It draws on a model of affiliation, together with the emoji text relations of concurrence, resonance, and synchronicity developed in the three previous chapters, to undertake detailed analysis of the social bonds at stake in these exchanges....

Social media is resplendent with a creative blend of non-standardised graphical resources such as images, memes, digital stickers, avatars and GIFs that extend beyond the rigid parameters of Unicode emoji character encoding. This chapter explores how emoji interact with other kinds of visual resources beyond language in social media posts such as g...

This chapter summarises the model developed for exploring emoji-text convergence in this book. It reviews the system network for describing this convergence which was built up progressively throughout, covering textual synchronicity, ideational concurrence, and interpersonal resonance. The chapter also consolidates the book’s exploration of the rol...

This chapter explores the interpersonal function of emoji as they resonate with the linguistic attitude and negotiation of solidarity expressed in social media posts. We have introduced a system network for describing the ways in which this resonance can occur, making a distinction between emoji which imbue the co-text with interpersonal meaning (u...

This chapter introduces the study of emoji as a form of social media paralanguage. It delves into the semiotic versatility of emoji as ‘picture characters’ enabling users to express a wide range of meanings through their use with language in social media communication. The book approaches emoji as a form of paralanguage due to their close dependenc...

This chapter explores the ideational function of emoji as they concur with language to construe experience as items and activities in social media posts. The chapter details a system network for modelling ideational concurrence. This network defines two main kinds of relations: depiction and embellishment. Depiction is where emoji congruently illus...

This chapter describes the ways in which emoji and language synchronise to realise textual meaning in a social media post. It organises these as features of a system network that describes this sychronicity. A primary distinction is made between instances where emoji replace linguistic co-text (inset) and instances where emoji accompany the linguis...

This chapter explores how emoji can function as a resource operating in the service of ambient affiliation, which unlike the dialogic affiliation explored in the previous chapter, does not rely on direct interaction. The chapter analyses the role of emoji in finessing and promoting the social bonds that are tabled to ambient audiences in social med...

Exploring the relationship between theory and practice in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this volume offers a state-of-the-art overview of Appliable Linguistics. Featuring both internationally-renowned scholars and rising stars from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Indonesia, New Zealand, Singapore and the USA, Appliab...

Exploring the relationship between theory and practice in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this volume offers a state-of-the-art overview of Appliable Linguistics. Featuring both internationally-renowned scholars and rising stars from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Indonesia, New Zealand, Singapore and the USA, Appliab...

This paper applies a social semiotic framework for exploring the functions of emoji in digital discourse about working from home (WFH). This is an important and prevalent discourse in the on-going COVID-19 pandemic due to widespread ‘lockdowns’ aimed at reducing the spread of the virus which have had a profound impact upon how and where people work...

This article presents a social semiotic analysis of emoji-language semiosis. Combining the theoretical architecture of Systemic Functional Linguistics and methodology of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, we propose an analytical framework that can identify how emoji make meaning both individually and in interaction with language. Using the web-based c...

The growth of the Internet has seen the emergence of elaborate examples of cybercrime in the form of ‘scams’. Alongside this, a resistance has also developed, with ‘scambaiters’ engaging in complex and deceptive scenarios to waste scammers’ time and educate others about online scams. This has been facilitated by the evolution of new media platforms...

This paper argues that paralinguistic resources employed by stand-up comedians to construe textual personae (impersonated characters) make a substantial contribution to the creation of humor by allowing the comedian to distance themselves from particular social values and by referencing shared cultural stereotypes. A stretch of stand-up comedy disc...

This paper presents a social semiotic analysis of a stand-up comedy text. Its aim is to explore how dialogic resources contribute to humour. The research is informed by the concept of affiliation in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and work on interactional humour. Laughter is treated as a marker for the deferral of social values that create n...