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Pragmatic functions of multimodal resources in WhatsApp interactions

Elizabeth Flores- Salgada & Teresa Castineira-Benitez

Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla​

WhatsApp has become one of the most popular means of instant communication that provides individuals the opportunity to exchange text, audio, and visual messages. In order to achieve effective pragmatic communication, users need to possess ‘mobile literacy’ (Danesi, 2017), which is a type of hybrid literacy combining vernacular with information literacy. WhatsApp conversations have increasingly incorporated multimodal devices such as emoji, stickers, GIFs, images, avatars, and videos into comment threads (Herring, 2007; Sampietro, 2016). Adapting methods of pragmatic theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987, Blum-Kulka, 1989) and multimodal interaction (Eisenlauer 2011, 2013; Kress, 2010), we explore the frequency and pragmatic functions of each multimodal resource employed in a WhatsApp group. Based on the analytical framework proposed by Danesi (2017), the following pragmatic functions were examined: phatic, emotive, referential, intensifying, underscoring tone, enhancing tone, showing humor and expressing sarcasm.  Data consisted of a family WhatsApp group planning their Christmas exchange gifts. This group was formed by 10 participants whose ages ranged between 15 and 72 years old. Five participants are female and five male. Consent was obtained from all interactants. The analysis covers the period of time since the chat was created on October 22 until December 23, 2017. Findings showed that the most used multimodal resource was emoji in different positions to accomplish various pragmatic purposes such as intensification (tone-enhancing) or showing humor. They were followed by avatars with an intensifying emotive function, and images with referential functions. Examples of our analysis and findings will be presented and discussed.

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