Emoticons, a form of paralanguage, are symbols made up of characters available on a keyboard.

four people holding emoticons over their faces

They normally represent emotions, such as happiness or anger. Emoticons are also available on chat sites as small symbols, normally faces.


Example
: ) is happy, (:-$ is sick, :-@ is screaming.

In the classroom
Focusing on emoticons as a feature of text will help learners understand authentic materials from the worldwide web or e-mail. Students can practise writing messages to each other using emoticons.

Further links:

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/email-writing

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