Relationship between Emotional Words and Emoticons in Tweets

Abstract

Asynchronous communication using text messaging is a major mode of o n l i n e communication. It is simple and easy to use, however, there is often an inconsistency between the sender's intended tone and how the recipient perceives it. Emoticons, additional textual expression using icons for facial expressions, are often used to supplement or adjust the verbal part of t h e text, though the problem persists. The goal of our research is to solve the problem by developing a system that supports fluent communication. The system would estimate t h e emotions in the s e n d e r ' s text and note whether different intentions may be conveyed. For that purpose, we analyzed concurrences between emotional words and emoticons in a text. We observed the following: (1) There are cases when the emotion represented in words and the emotion represented by the emoticon are inconsistent, (2) The expressed emotion c a n change between positive and negative emotion according to the co-occurring words.