How teenagers show emotion on social media

By Panos Perdiclones

In today’s social media-dominated world, communication has sustained considerable changes. The lack of face-to-face communication, however, means that our already existing llanguage resources need to be reconceptualized; we need to begin anew, to adapt or invent novel uses of this pre-existing linguistic arsenal.

Teens are major inventors of this new code as they use social media on a daily basis. But how do they convey emotions and relations in a rather impersonal context such as a chat room? 

Non-linguistic resources 

No one would ever imagine that facial expressions would once be supplanted by cute yellow faces which smile, laugh, and even throw up! Honestly, they can do anything and except for emoticons, all useful resources are there: meals, flags, animals and so on. You have probably used these tiny images to convey meaningful language without using words, which comes in handy. Apart from that, GIFS are also a…