Emoji Explication in Digital Communication: Logical-Phenomenological Experiment

Abstract

The paper examines the digital linguistic sign Emoji in digital communication through the logical-linguistic lens. It is concluded that the explication of the content plane and expression plane of an optical digital sign due to the bilaterality of its structure is inexhaustible, because emoji optics include psychophysiological factors that appeal to both linguistic and extralinguistic elements of sign formation. Consequently, the substrate for the study of the emoji sign is its polylaterality. The latter allows the synthesis of structural (logical) with the conceptual (phenomenological) level of explication of the sign, because the plane of content and the plane of expression of the optical sign in digital communication is both in its form and in the semantic load. The study focuses on an empirical experiment – an online survey called “Emoji-association”, which contains 147 perceptions and interpretations of emoji signs from recipients. The experiment results are tested through G. Frege’s semantic triangle, which schematically demonstrates a bilateral approach to the plane of content, depending on both the abstract denotation (word proper) and the specific meaning. With emphasis on polylaterality and its verification, hypothetical-deductive syllogisms are created, which includes interpretive tokens, which, according to digital analysis of answers using the web-application package Voyant Tools, are more common in frequency. According to the results of the experimental logical-linguistic approach to the study of the emoji sign in digital communication, it is concluded that the logical tools applied in the study, provide for the fractalization of agrammatical formants of the emoji sign with the verbal versions of its formants, with subsequent verification of both.