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Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 3, 299-307 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0261927X06303481
© 2007 SAGE Publications

Emotional Expression Online

Emoticons Punctuate Website Text Messages

Robert R. Provine

University of Maryland, Baltimore County, provine{at}umbc.edu

Robert J. Spencer

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Darcy L. Mandell

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Laughter "punctuates" speech, occurring during pauses, at phrase boundaries, and before and after statements and questions—the places where punctuation would be placed in a transcript of a conversation. Such punctuation indicates that language is dominant over laughter in competition for the vocal tract because laughter seldom interrupts spoken phrases. The punctuation effect is shown here to extend to emoticon placement in website text messages, a nonvocal linguistic medium. As in earlier studies of speaking and manual signing, the phrase structure of language was preserved, indicating the regulation of emotional expression by a common, higher-order linguistic process.

Key Words: emoticons • e-mail • punctuation effect • computer-mediated communication • human-computer interactions • affective computing • text messaging


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