Autore: Cappelli, Gloria
Titolo: Procedural Meaning in Multimodal Pragmatics: How Emojis Modulate Epistemic Interpretation
Periodico: Textus
Anno: 2026 - Fascicolo: 1 - Pagina iniziale: 201 - Pagina finale: 220

This study investigates how emojis influence the interpretation of epistemic modality in digital discourse. It tests, in controlled settings, whether emojis can change how readers assess writers’ epistemic commitment and the truth of modalised and unmodalised statements. 144 native speakers of British English evaluated short declarative sentences containing epistemic markers (e.g., must, might, I guess), paired with pre-tested epistemic or stance emojis. Control conditions included unmodalised sentences and no-emoji versions. Participants rated the statements using Likert scales. The results demonstrate that both epistemic and stance emojis significantly modulate interpretation. Epistemic emojis tend to weaken perceived certainty and plausibility, particularly when mismatched with strong modality expressions. Stance emojis influence higher-level pragmatic interpretation when epistemic force is ambiguous. Interpreted within a Relevance Theory framework (Yus 2025), the findings suggest emojis play a key procedural role, guiding interpretation and giving rise to visual explicatures and implicatures, thereby proving critical in the multimodal construction of epistemic stance in digital communication.




SICI: 1824-3967(2026)1<201:PMIMPH>2.0.ZU;2-9
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.7370/120126
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.7370/120126

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