Os emoticons e a teoria da polidez em mensagens instantâneas entre adolescentes e jovens adultos

Abstract

The present project evaluates the use of two emoticons (little icons that supposedly denote emotions) in the virtual world, particularly in Instant Messages (IM) of interactions that happened on MSN. The project uses as subjects a group of 67 individuals between the ages of 17 and 23 years old, residents of Rio de Janeiro, who belong to the same social level and have no hierarchical difference. The interactions were transformed into txt and treated through the Wordsmith 5.0 tool (Scott, 2008) to organize them, quantify them and prepare them for analysis. After separating the lines with emoticons, they were classified according to the Politeness Theory to verify if the emoticon could have the function of politeness in the discourse and if it could mitigate an FTA (Face Threatening Act). The concept of speech acts was also used to explain those emoticons that could not be explained by the Politeness Theory. The research used authentic material donated by its participants and collected throughout the year 2011. The present work researched how emoticons were used, by whom and its frequency and preference, including in terms of gender. The results point to a restriction of the application of the Politeness Theory to explain emoticons: they seem to have multiple functions besides politeness and mitigation. The results also point to a preference by each gender for a specific function of the investigated emoticons.