emoticons

A portmanteau of emotion and icon, an emoticon is a symbol or combination of symbols used to convey emotional content in written or message form. Some examples of text-based emoticons include: :-) :-( ;-)
See more at Wikipedia.org...

Noun
1. a representation of a facial expression (as a smile or frown) created by typing a sequence of characters in sending email; ":-( and :-) are emoticons"
(hypernym) facial expression, facial gesture
(hyponym) smiley