The discourse deictics ∧and <-- in a World of Warcraft community

What is it about?

This paper discusses the use of two arrow-shaped symbols in conversation in the online game World of Warcraft. These arrows, which are called deictics, are used to point to other words that the players are talking about. However, in addition to the pointing functions, the arrows have taken on other meanings - an agreement signal (in the case of ^) and a volunteering signal (in the case of <--). An exploration of the shift in meaning is done using conversational data collected over five years, and it is shown that these non-deictic meanings evolved over time in the sample.

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Why is it important?

This is an example of a symbol in online discourse evolving from an iconic meaning (that is, something interpretable from its appearance) to a more nuanced meaning. I argue in this paper that these symbols should be considered morphemes (or words) in this version of written English.