As funções da linguagem no processo de retextualização: um estudo a partir da obra Emoji Dick, or the Whale.

Abstract

Moby Dick is a well-known American novel. As well as other famous works, the story of the great white whale has been retold in different occasions, in a wide variety of genres. In 2010, a book called Emoji Dick, or The Whale was published by Fred Benenson. The retextualization was the first novel translated into emojis accepted by the Library of Congress, the oldest of the US. Taking Emoji Dick as an object of study, this research analyzes emojis as human communicability tools. Although the main objective of this article is to identify which functions of language are prevailing in the retextualization process that happens in Emoji Dick, this work eventually explores the role that the image signs at issue hold as a linguistic resource in general. The theoretical background that is the basis of this research was mainly taken from studies focused on the functions of language proposed by Jakobson (1979) and discussed by Chalhub (1997), and the retextualization process offered by Marcuschi (2001). Therefore, this study aims to investigate and unravel to what extent emojis act as effective dialogue instruments to the human communication.