In July 2021, 20.69 percent of monitored tweets contained at least one emoji, up from 20.15 percent in July of the previous year. Between 2016 and 2021, emoji usage on the micro-blogging platform increased by over 42 percent. Overall, 2018 to 2019 saw the largest year-on-year increase in emoji usage on Twitter.

ABSTRACT Emojis are linked to the emotive expression, as well as to the identification of the prevailing speech act in a communicative exchange carried in the digital environment. From this perspective, this study is in line with the notion that these icons may be used to highlight the illocutionary force of a given speech act (DRESNER, HERRING, 2010, AVELAR, 2018), more specifically, the apologies following refusals, (KERBRAT-ORECCHIONI, 2001, LEECH, 2014). To verify the validity of this proposal, we carried the analysis of 432 threadscontaining emojis, collected from interactions within a WhatsApp group (AVELAR, 2018). The results point out that emojis constituted a strategy of repair, used to restore the image of the offender and that of the offended. These strategies also served as repairs, due to the potential face loss resulting from the accomplishment of a dispreferred speech act, such as refusals.