Del emoticono al sticker: tendencias en el uso de graficones en interacciones de WhatsApp en lengua española

Abstract

If digital interaction was originally a textual phenomenon, today it is undergoing an important multimodal shift. With im-proved connections and the evolution of mobile devices, digital interactions have become populated with graphic signs that interact with the written word. Photos, videos, memes, emojis, GIFs, stickers, etc., make up a category of elements with shared functional properties: graphicons (Herring y Dainas, 2017). After reviewing the language samples available in the CoDiCE corpus (Digital Communication: Spanish Corpus), which collects data from 2001 to the present, this paper reviews the evolu-tion of the use of graphicons in the digital interaction written in Spanish. . We hypothesize that, in its graphic and functional evolution, the use of graphicons participates in a trend typical of written digital interaction: in the transition from emoticon to sticker, visual complexity brings with it an increase in the intensity of its emotional value. In this line, we argue that with the expansion of the repertoire of units, their use has been consolidated from a quantitative point of view, as well as new functions have been conquered that may bring with them a certain specialization in the uses of each of these graphic elements.