Abstract

With the unceasing progress of science and technology, network instant messaging (IM) which is a new mode of communication has already become one of the essential means of people’s daily communication. Due to its symbolic feature, emoticon can be seen everywhere in Internet communication and contributes to expressing more vivid meanings. Because of its novelty, however, few researches have been made on emoticons. Compared to other studies at home abroad, especially related to linguistic field, the studies are scanty. In addition, the researches on emoticons are mostly limited to the form, design feature and other external factors. 

    Therefore, the present study will be based on the previous researches, equipped with Royce’s intersemiotic complementarity analysis and visual design grammar of Kress and Van Leeuwen, collecting the typical emoticons from different periods and data that are private and group history chat logs as samples, to discuss the cognitive process of emoticon in discourse and investigate the internal mechanism of its expressing way. And this analysis will contribute to the further relevant study in the future.

Keywords: emoticon; Instant Messaging; Intersemiotic Complementarity; Visual Design Grammar; Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

Chapter One   Introduction-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Research Purpose-2

1.3 Thesis Outline-2

Chapter Two   Literature Review-4

2.1 Systemic-functional Linguistic-4

2.2 Multimodal Discourse Analysis-5

2.3 Other researches on emoticon-5

Chapter Three   Theoretical Foundation-7

3.1 Intersemiotic Complitemtarity-7

3.1.1  Ideational Intersemiotic Complementarity-7

3.1.2  Interpersonal Intersemiotic Complementarity-8

3.1.3  Compositional Intersemiotic Complementarity-9

3.2 The Grammar of Visual Design-9

Chapter Four   Analysis of Emoticon-10

4.1 Cohesion: the ideational intersemiotic complementarity of emoticon-10

4.2 Interaction: the interpersonal intersemiotic complementarity of emoticon-11

4.2.1   Content-12

4.2.2   Modality-13

4.3 Information Value: the compositional intersemiotic complementarity of emoticon-14

4.4  Discussion-16

Chapter Five   Conclusion-20

5.1 Major findings of the study-20

5.2 Limitations of the study-20

5.3 Prospects for further researches-20

References-22