Exploring the Communicative Functions of Graphic Interchange Formats (GIFs) in WhatsApp Communication in Jordan

<p class="ql-align-justify">This study explores the communicative functions of Graphic Interchange Formats (GIFs) in Jordanian Arabic WhatsApp conversations. It aims to answer the following research question: What are the communicative functions of the GIFs used in Jordanian Arabic WhatsApp chats? To this end, one hundred GIFs were collected from Jordanian’s WhatsApp conversations. They were then classified according to their communicative functions based on speech act theory. This study adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve its objective. The findings indicated that GIFs play a vital role in visual communication on social media. The study identified four main categories of speech acts expressed by GIFs: expressives, commissives, assertives, and directives. It also indicated that Expressive GIFs were the most prevalent, accounting for 74%, whereas Directive GIFs had the lowest representation, representing only 4% of the dataset. The study’s findings have practical implications for the interpretation of visual communication in computer-mediated communication (CMC).</p>