Exploring the Graphicon

A blog about internet linguistics, reaction GIFs and memes

[graphiclanguages-blog]

Understanding Emoji Survey

Hi! We’re conducting a survey to understand how people interpret the use of emoji on Facebook, as part of a larger study of emoji, stickers and GIFs online. If you ever use or read emoji, then we want to know how you interpret them! Your response will help advance research on emoji.

Taking this survey is voluntary, and all responses will be kept confidential. The survey contains questions about 14 cases of emoji use and some additional demographic questions. Please click the link below if you’re interested:

https://iu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8e70jAJYDlS8wIJ

[graphiclanguages-blog]

Thank you to everyone who has taken the survey so far! We really appreciate it!!

We’ve gotten some excellent responses, but we would love to get as many more as we can before we close the survey.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please do! (You don’t need to be a native speaker) And if you can, please reblog!

[janicexxx]

[averagetransman]

‘Proper grammar is racist’ ?????????????? I’m sorry wh

[fandomsandfeminism]

“Proper” grammar has long been decided by and canonized by the upper (predominately white) class- causing lower class and minority dialects (and the people who speak them) to be treated as inferior and uneducated.

[super-spark-liz]

I have a vested interest in proper grammar and punctuation. I am a working class peasant, and a writer.

Care to, maybe, reassess that statement?

[fandomsandfeminism]

I am an English teacher, with an education in linguistic history and sociolinguiatics. Consider that maybe your personal relationship with language is not universal.

[jenakarii-deactivated20260213]

So what you’re saying here @fandomsandfeminism is that the solution is allow the breakdown of English into mutually hostile class and regional dialects rather than, ya know, teach everyone English. 

[fandomsandfeminism]

People who speak AAVE and Appalachian English ARE speaking English already.

Which version of English is the one you think deserves to be the only one?

[yeli-renrong]

I learned standard English because my parents had some grammar books lying around and I read them. Had I not done that or had access to said books, my job prospects would be even more dismal than they are. The only realistic alternative to teaching upper-class norms in the schools is ensuring that they’re only taught to the children of the upper class, or of the children of the few not-upper-class parents who buy a lot of books.

But I notice that a lot of the people who insist that teaching the standard is bad are also active producers of upper-class norms, and are invested in making them as complex and as distasteful as they can. So maybe that’s the point!

[missalsfromiram-deactivated2020]

Nobody in this thread said anything against teaching the standard variety. The original tweet even said, “multiple english vernaculars”.

This is just like John McWhorter’s observation that whenever he talks about how AAVE/Black English has a complete grammatical structure and is not inherently worse than any other variety of English, someone always goes “But interviews! Interviews! What do think will happen if they speak that way at job interviews!” —Well he didn’t say anything about job interviews, damn it! He didn’t say we should abandon Standard English; the point he’s making is that it’s diglossia - one variety isn’t inherently more correct, it’s about two different varieties being used in different areas of life and society.

[sxfjan]

me: i study linguistics

everyone over the age of 40: oh good u can sort out all those uneducated people who don’t speak properly!

me:

[unofficial-cactus]

English has alternating stress patterns that indicate whether related words are nouns (first syllable stressed) or verbs (second syllable stressed):

Noun: récord Verb: recórd

(x)

[unofficial-cactus]

My fucking god!! This is why English does the thing!!!!

[ground-dove]

contract

contract

FINALLY IT MAKES SENSE

[unofficial-cactus]

it’s the most subtle difference but it’s beautiful.

[zorascreation]

This is why English should be written with accents.

[blackfemmejeanvaljean]

my mind is blown

[wabbitwanderer95]

As a native english speaker i didnt realise this shit and spent the past 5 minutes trying to work out what the difference was

[snowgall]

When most people tell you they think words are so fascinating, they have in mind items like “canoodle” and “serendipity.” When linguists say it, they have in mind, like, “the.”

Geoffrey Nunberg on twitter, January 3, 2018 (via linguisten)

[allthingslinguistic]

Meme’s Best Friend: The Rise of 'Doggo'

How a possibly-Australian bit of slang came to dominate your social media feeds.

I’m quoted in this Wired article about the history of “doggo”. Excerpt: 

Actually, there’s a strong case to be made that the word originated in Australia. To start, doggo first gained traction on a Facebook group called Dogspotting, a 10-year-old community that became quite popular in Australia, says internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch.

“Australian English has this tendency to make cute pet-names, what’s known in the literature as hypocoristics,” says McCulloch. “Like ‘afternoon’ becomes ‘arvo,’ or ‘avocado’ becomes ‘avo,’ or John becomes ‘John-o’.”

Ben Bergen, a cognitive science professor at UC San Diego, also notes “the -o suffix is much more common in Australia and Great Britain. Like ‘boy-o’ or nicknames for people, like ‘Jim-o.’”

“It’s possible the [Australians on Dogspotting] were just using this slang and it caught on as an internet thing because people encountered it in the group,” says McCulloch.

McCulloch’s research on doggo led her further down under, to a 1966 document titled “Industrial and intellectual property in Australia, Volume 3” in which the word was referenced as an affectionate term for a dog. (Doggo as a term for dog also made an appearance in a 1994 novel set in Sydney called the Weston Men’s Tennis Club.)

Previously about doggo in this article for NPR. 

[graphiclanguages-blog]

SEQUENTIALLY Speaking

The sixth thing that Graphicons (Emoticons, Emoji, Stickers, GIFs, Images, and Videos) can do is form a Sequence.

This is when a series of consecutive graphicons are put together to tell a “story”.

On Facebook, sequences are usually formed by a string of emoji, like this one:

This might mean something like ‘Fuck you up there (who are complaining); zip it, ok?’

But on tumblr you’re more likely to see a sequence made of images, GIFs or Emoticons. 

If you see any good examples of sequences on tumblr, please let me know!!

- Herring & Dainas, 2017

[graphiclanguages-blog]

ACTIONS Speak Louder Than Words

The fifth thing that Graphicons ( Emoticons, Emoji, Stickers, GIFs, Images, and Videos) can do is perform Actions.

This is when a graphicon is used to portrays a (typically) physical action

An action can add a nuance of meaning to your sentence like the clap emoji in the “ratchet clap” meme

Source

And a graphicon doing an action can stand alone as a proposition of it’s own

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- Herring & Dainas, 2017

[graphiclanguages-blog]

I’m Not Sure I Like Your TONE

The fourth thing that Graphicons ( Emoticons, Emoji, Stickers, GIFs, Images, and Videos) can do is add Tone to a message.

This is when we use graphicons as a way to help people figure out how to read out comments. They basically always have to go with text. And using graphicons this way can help you clarify or soften what you’re trying to say. 

Some examples from our paper:

In fancy linguistic speak, we might say that graphicons used this way are functioning as “nonverbal, paraverbal, or paralinguistic interpretation cues” and that they can “hedging the illocutionary force of an utterance”.

- Herring & Dainas, 2017

[graphiclanguages-blog]

Are You RIFFING Me?

The third thing that Graphicons ( Emoticons, Emoji, Stickers, GIFs, Images, and Videos) can do is Riff.

A Riff is an (often humorous) elaboration on, play on, or parody of a previous graphicon or text comment. 

Here’s a fun example from a research on Facebook:

This image got posted to the Nihilist Memes Facebook Group

This post generated a lot of riffs, sometimes on the concept of nihilism + breakfast foods, and sometimes just on breakfast foods...

- Herring & Dainas, 2017 

[graphiclanguages-blog]

How Should I REACT to That?

The second thing that Graphicons (Emoticons, Emoji, Stickers, GIFs, Images, and Videos) can do is React.

A graphicon is serving as a reaction when it depicts an emotional response to previous content in a conversation or post.

....Basically every reaction image or GIF you’ve every seen or used here on tumblr

- Herring & Dainas, 2017

[graphiclanguages-blog]

Now that you MENTION it

The first thing that Graphicons ( Emoticons, Emoji, Stickers, GIFs, Images, and Videos) can do is Mention. This draws on the dusty philosophical distinction between using a word and just mentioning it.

In our research, we said that a graphicon is a mention when it doesn’t refer to anything but itself.

Here’s an example using the same GIF...

Use: Me when I get a paper accepted:

vs.

Mention: The GIF below contains a wug:

- Herring & Dainas, 2017 

[shadow27]

Chewbacca… his arms open.

[mscottwrites]

This is some NEXT LEVEL nerd-ing and I nearly cried reading it.

[bass-borot]

I don’t get it

[bass-borot]

Please explain ;_;

[magicalgirlmindcrank]

There is a star trek TNG episode where Picard encounters a race that doesn’t speak in actual structured sentences but conveys ideas through story parralels. The ones referenced here are “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” - cooperation, “Shaka, when the walls fell” - failure and Temba, his arms wide/open" - signifying a gift.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tamarian_language

[wariowaretrans]

nice

[flavoracle]

OK, but here’s what’s awesome/hilarious about this.

The whole point about why communicating with the Tamarians was so frustrating was because all of their communication was contextual. The problem wasn’t that Picard couldn’t understand what words they were saying (the universal translator worked fine) the problem was that he didn’t understand what THOSE WORDS TOGETHER HAD TO DO WITH ANYTHING.

Why is this hilarious/fascinating to me? Because this is essentially what people are doing today with memes. They are posting pictures and writing sentences THAT MAKE NO SENSE WITHOUT PRIOR CONTEXT.

If Picard beamed down right now, and you told him that Data is a cinnamon roll… you are a Tamarian.

[graphiclanguages-blog]

For the survey it says English speakers, does it means native speakers or anybody speaking English?

As long as you can speak and understand English well, you don’t need to be a native speaker.

[graphiclanguages-blog]

What Kinds of Things do Graphicons Do?

Ok, so. Graphicons apparently do similar things? What do they do exactly? Well, according to our research so far, graphicons can do the following:

Mention (vs. Use)

Reaction

Tone Modification

Riff

Action

Sequence

My next few posts are going to give examples of what these things are...

- Herring and Dainas, 2017

[linguistsagainsthumanity]

Contest entry from dftba-starkids.

[graphiclanguages-blog]

Understanding Emoji Survey

Hi! We’re conducting a survey to understand how people interpret the use of emoji on Facebook, as part of a larger study of emoji, stickers and GIFs online. If you ever use or read emoji, then we want to know how you interpret them! Your response will help advance research on emoji.

Taking this survey is voluntary, and all responses will be kept confidential. The survey contains questions about 14 cases of emoji use and some additional demographic questions. Please click the link below if you’re interested:

https://iu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8e70jAJYDlS8wIJ