This chapter explores the ideational function of emoji as they concur with language to construe experience as items and activities in social media posts. The chapter details a system network for modelling ideational concurrence. This network defines two main kinds of relations: depiction and embellishment. Depiction is where emoji congruently illustrate their co-text or integrate themselves into the ideational structure of the post. Embellishment, on the other hand, is where emoji make less congruent meanings by either metaphorising through figurative meanings or emblematising through symbols that activate preconfigured meanings for particular communities. The chapter draws on the discourse semantic system of ideation introduced in Chapter 3 to understand the concurrence of emoji and linguistic sequences, figures, and elements.

The chapter discusses how quantitative and qualitative methods can be combined, outlines their strengths and limitations, and introduces four qualitative approaches of linguistic analysis: version analysis, progression analysis, variation analysis, and metadiscourse analysis. Together, the four approaches enable researchers to understand language use in digital media environments from multiple angles. Furthermore, the chapter provides an insight into visual content analysis, semiotics, and iconography/iconology. For multimodal analysis, a three-stage method is presented. Finally, the chapter discusses how the multimodal text relates to a certain text genre and to the social context of which it is a part.