GIFs as Embodied Enactments in Text-Mediated Conversation

Text messaging has become an increasingly common medium for communication. Its format provides a novel context for the study of social activity in ways that both mirror face-to-face dialogue and extend beyond it. Based on the analysis of a corpus of text-mediated conversations incorporating animated images (“graphical interchange formats,” commonly known as GIFs), we show how texters reproduce depictions of the embodied actions of others as stand-ins for their own nonverbal behavior. They use GIFs either as affective responses displaying their stance toward prior talk or as co-text demonstrations of affect and action. The use of GIFs represents a novel form of embodied reenactment made possible within the technological advances of the communicative system. Data are in American English.