CONVEYING EMOTIONS WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING: EMOTICONS IN INSTANT MESSAGING

ABSTRACT Bethoven, R.Y, 2016. Conveying Emotions without Saying Anything: Emoticons inInstant Messaging. Thesis. Department of English, Faculty of Letters, UniversitasNegeri Malang. Advisors: (I) Dr. Suharyadi, S.Pd, M.Pd., and (II) Prof. Dr. YazidBasthomi, M.A.Keyword: emoticons, conveying emotions in instant messaging service For instant messaging or computer mediated communication users, whomainly use text to communicate, emoticons are considered as great tools. Emoticonsusages in instant messaging services plays a crucial role that can act like the nonverbalcues in face to face communication. This research investigated the use of emoticons in LINE as one of the mostpopular instant messaging services. Descriptive-qualitative apporach is amenable, inthis research, to obtain straight answers towards the research question. Theresearcher, as the key instrument, use his smartphone as a support instrument. Thedata themselves are in the form of screen capture from various groups chatconversations. Any text messages that comes up with the emoticon is captured forfurther analysis.The researcher collected 135 message samples with emoticons usagein them from August 2015 to March 2016. The users used emoticons in the messagefor various functions according to the Dresmer’s and Herring’s theory. The first is toconvey emotion such as joy, sadness, fear, etc. The second is to deliver nonemotionalmeaning like wink to indicate a joking intention. The third is as anillocutionary force indicator. To know the dominant function in the emoticons usagebecomes the main goal in this research. The findings indicate the first function of emoticons usage, which is to conveyemotion as the dominant function. Most of the users used emoticons to convey theiremotions toward the recipient. The emoticons usage also enchants the context of themessage in the proccess. Interestingly, the researcher found a resemblance betweenthe cuneiform from the Sumerian language with the modern emoticons. In addition,the researcher also found a request or demand in the message that includes sademoticons from the sender to the recipient. As the bottom line, this research shows that most of the emoticons usage ismainly to convey the emotion from the sender towards the recipient. Interestingly, thesad emoticon usages are followed by a request or demand in most cases. For futureresearch, the researcher’s suggestion is to investigate whether the emoticons usage isjust a momentary language phenomenon or will be carried on by the users as the timepasses. There is also a possibility that the emoticons usage will be erased or changed in the future