In the last decade, the use of mobile apps for language education purposes has garnered attention from researchers and teachers. Part of this interest has been associated with
the increased use of social networking applications (apps) such as WhatsApp and WeChat (Kacetl & Klímová, 2019; Li, 2018). Closely connected to this increase has been
an exponential use of emojis and stickers in social media chats. However, there seems to be a gap in the literature around the appearance of these graphicons in a social
networking app used to promote collaborative and supportive engagement of learners in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) environment. This study sheds light on the
use of these graphicons in an EAP environment. In this article, the term graphicon, as defined by Herring and Dainas (2017), refers to graphical icons such as emoticons,
emoji, stickers, GIFs, images and video clips. Initially, interaction patterns between
learners and learners, as well as between teachers and learners, were analysed by the
researchers. Following on from that initial analysis, the second analysis framework (Danesi, 2016) explored relationship building posts. In the initial pattern analysis one of the findings indicate that teachers often used emojis to soften messages related to academic tasks. Overall, the results indicate that most emoji and sticker use performed
the function of injecting friendliness and positive feelings compared to the tone enhancing function. However, for tone-enhancing, teachers used the most emojis. This
connects to the earlier mentioned findings that teachers often used emojis to soften messages in serious work-related messages.