Relationship between Emotional Words and Emoticons in Tweets

Asynchronous communication using text messaging is a major mode of o n l i n e communication. It is simple and easy to use, however, there is often an inconsistency between the sender´s intended tone and how the recipient perceives it. Emoticons, additional textual expression using icons for facial expressions, are often used to supplement or adjust the verbal part of t h e text, though the problem persists. The goal of our research is to solve the problem by developing a system that supports fluent communication. The system would estimate t h e emotions in the s e n d e r ´ s text and note whether different intentions may be conveyed. For that purpose, we analyzed concurrences between emotional words and emoticons in a text. We observed the following: (1) There are cases when the emotion represented in words and the emotion represented by the emoticon are inconsistent, (2) The expressed emotion c a n change between positive and negative emotion according to the co-occurring words.