The Emoticon Functions in Antiphrasis Interpretation on Doctissimo's Forums

On one hand, irony and more specifically antiphrasis, are widely used on Social Media but very difficult to detect as they often present no specific signifier pointing to their presence in an utterance. They are part of Non-Conventional implicitness as defined by Grice and, to be well interpreted, require the locutor to refer to extra-linguistic indications (such as context, tone, mimic, gesture, etc.) On the other hand, as defined by Marcoccia, emoticons are part of Cyberlocutors' new communicational strategies and act under several functions, such as Expressive, Softening, Relational and Interpretative. When emoticons act under their Interpretative Function, they act as extra-linguistic indications helping and changing the interpretation. in this article, we present an analysis of the case of antiphrasis in the context of communication in forums-which presents no physical context–and the way emoticons are supposed to help interpretation as they are used under their Interpretative Function.