Emoticons and Emojis: Affective and Pragmatic Tools in Disambiguating Text Communication

Abstract

In person-to-person communication, misunderstandings generally happen due to a lack of shared meaning. This shared meaning is established through various sources such as context, environment, nonverbal cues, or conversation history, just to name a few. These misunderstandings can be referential or affective in nature. Recent advances in technology have increased the prevalence of communication via text, whether it is through online social media platforms or through text messaging on mobile devices. Because text communication lacks some of the sources of meaning that are available in person-to-person communication such as nonverbal cues, text communication is thought to result in more misunderstandings. Without nonverbal cues such as facial expressions and intonation, misunderstandings are often affective in nature. Numerous studies have shown that the emergence of emoticons and emojis has allowed for more affective meaning conveyance and sometimes helps to reduce perceived misunderstandings. However, because emojis have an every growing inventory and variation across platforms, their use often increases ambiguity and miscommunication.

Full text

Running Head: EMOTICONS AND EMOJIS 1
Emoticons and Emojis: Affective and Pragmatic Tools in Disambiguating Text Communication
Kimberly C. Young
Department of Psychology, Tufts University

Emoticons and Emojis 2
Abstract
In person-to-person communication, misunderstandings generally happen due to a lack of shared
meaning. This shared meaning is established through various sources such as context, environment,
nonverbal cues, or conversation history, just to name a few. These misunderstandings can be referential
or affective in nature. Recent advances in technology have increased the prevalence of communication
via text, whether it is through online social media platforms or through text messaging on mobile
devices. Because text communication lacks some of the sources of meaning that are available in person-
to-person communication such as nonverbal cues, text communication is thought to result in more
misunderstandings. Without nonverbal cues such as facial expressions and intonation,
misunderstandings are often affective in nature. Numerous studies have shown that the emergence of
emoticons and emojis has allowed for more affective meaning conveyance and sometimes helps to
reduce perceived misunderstandings. However, because emojis have an every growing inventory and
variation across platforms, their use often increases ambiguity and miscommunication.
Keywords: miscommunication, communication, text messaging, emojis, emoticons

Running Head: EMOTICONS AND EMOJIS 3
Introduction
1
Text communication is generally thought to have more limitations and can lead to more
2
miscommunication than person-to-person communication. This is because text lacks non-verbal cues
3
such as facial expressions and tone that are thought to express emotions and aspect such as irony and
4
humor. Despite this, the last several decades has seen a drastic rise in text communication. The first text
5
message was sent and the first emojis created in the 1990s. Communication through text has become
6
increasingly more mainstream and part of everyday life for many people. Between text communication
7
via text messages, e-mails, direct messaging through numerous social media platforms, various forms of
8
online chat rooms such as Google Chat, online forums, and even Zoom chat, being able to adequately
9
and efficiently communicate is more important than it ever has before. We could have never foreseen
10
the direction communication would take and we likely cannot fathom what communication will look like
11
fifty years from now. But one thing that is certain is that humans will find a way to adapt new
12
communication tools to fit their needs. Such has been the case in filling the communication gap in text
13
communication using emoticons and emojis. Emoticons and emojis in some sense help communicate
14
affective meaning such as emotions and humor. They also can help reduce the likelihood of
15
miscommunication in some contexts. However, because there is so much variation in both emoticons
16
and emojis, they can actually increase ambiguity of meaning and miscommunication.
17
18
Verbal Miscommunication
19
Language gives us the ability to communicate complex ideas and thoughts to other human
20
beings. For most humans, spoken language is easily acquired in early childhood with very little explicit
21
instruction. Despite the fact that spoken language is a relatively easy and useful learned skill,
22
communication itself between people is not always so easy. In fact, miscommunication in a dialogue
23
between people is a common phenomenon. Successful communication comes from establishing shared
24
knowledge between speakers (Kelly & Miller-Ott, 2018; Clark, 1996; Clark & Marshall, 1981). Sources of
25
this shared knowledge can come from context, setting, nonverbal cues, situation, and prior
26
conversations and experiences (Tracy, 2013; Gumperz, 1992, Keysar, 2007). Therefore,
27
miscommunication can result in the inability to establish or maintain this shared knowledge. There are
28
two main types of miscommunication: referential and affective (Kelly & Miller-Ott, 2018; McTear, 2008;
29
Schegloff, 1987). Schegloff (1987) describes referential miscommunication as a situation where the
30
recipient in the conversation correctly ascertains the purpose of an utterance such as a request,
31
complaint, or assessment, but misunderstands a reference made within that utterance. A simple
32
example of a referential miscommunication is provided by Weigand (1999):
33
(1)
34
A: Give me the bucket, please! (with gesture)
35
B: (brings a bucket)
36
A: Not this one, I mean the little one to the left.
37

Emoticons and Emojis 4
The conversation in example 1 shows that even with the use of a gesture by speaker A to indicate the
1
referent (bucket), there was still a misunderstanding of which bucket was referenced. Speaker B
2
accurately understood the request by speaker A, but misunderstood the correct referent.
3
Affective miscommunication is when a recipient in a conversation does not understand the
4
affective meaning or emotion of an utterance (McTear, 2008; Bell, 1991). This type of
5
miscommunication not only encompasses general feelings but seems to include humor, irony, and
6
sarcasm. For example, irony is when the intended meaning of an utterance is the opposite of the spoken
7
utterance itself, and a misunderstanding will often take the literal meaning (Thompson, 2016).
8
Kapogianni (2014) offers an example of to illustrate this:
9
(2)
10
There is a bit of a drizzle.
11
(The rain is really heavy)
12
The utterance in example (2) shows the ironic utterance with its intended meaning shown in parenthesis
13
below it. A misunderstanding of the utterance would mean that the intended meaning is not accessible,
14
leaving the literal meaning as the only other accessible option. In this case a recipient of the utterance
15
would understand only that there is only a drizzle of rain rather than a downpour.
16
Understanding what miscommunication is and its causes within conversation is important
17
because it can often have disastrous effects. Miscommunication can lead to conflict, hurt feelings, and
18
interpersonal issues in people’s relationships or even more catastrophic effects. The loss of NASA’s Mars
19
climate orbiter within the Martian atmosphere in 1999 was a result of miscommunication between
20
engineers at two labs with regards to converting force from pounds to metric units (Sauser, Reille, &
21
Shenhar, 2009). This example highlights how miscommunication can lead to disaster and why
22
understanding them can have practical benefits.
23
24
The rise of text communication
25
The use of text in communication, which I will use to more broadly refer to all modes of text
26
communication, although still relatively new, has been around for several decades. In 1972, Ray
27
Tomlinson, a computer engineer, wanted to know if a message could be sent between two computers
28
and subsequently sent the first e-mail (Peter, 2004). Two decades later, in the 1990s, text messaging on
29
mobile phones started to take off (Lacohée, Wakeford, & Pearson, 2003). Since that first e-mail was
30
sent, communicating through text has only evolved and expanded over time, encompassing new
31
technologies and new devices in which to send messages. It is not uncommon for a single person to
32
communicate via text through multiple sources at a time. Within minutes of each other, a person can
33
send an e-mail on their computer, a text message through their phone, message someone through one
34
of many social media platforms, and recently, even send messages during a virtual Zoom meeting. It is
35
easily becoming a prominent form of communication.
36
In a report by Pew Research Center (2019), 96% of Americans own a cellphone and of those
37
people, 81% of them own a smartphone. This is a large increase in smartphone ownership compared to
38
the 35% of people who owned them in 2011 (Pew Research Center, 2019). Additionally, Pew Research
39

Emoticons and Emojis 5
Center shows that roughly 75% of adults own a desktop or laptop computer and 50% own a tablet. In a
1
study by Lenhart, Ling, Campbell, and Purcell (2010), they found that in 2006 51% of teenagers in the
2
United States sent text messages. In 2008 this number increased to 58%. More recent data showed that
3
100% of Americans between 18 and 29 years old used their phones for text messaging, 98% of
4
Americans between 30 and 49 years old use their phones for text messaging, and 92% aged 50 or older
5
used their phones for text messaging (Riordan, 2017; Pew Research Center, 2015). Although this data
6
focuses on American data, it is likely that other countries have similar percentages of technology and
7
text messaging. Given the large amount of people who use their phones for text messaging, it seems
8
that there must be benefits to this form of communication over person-to-person communication.
9
People often choose text communication over verbal communication for several reasons. Kelly
10
et al. (2012) conducted a study to determine what people liked or disliked about text communication.
11
They found that participants liked that text communication allowed for brevity in their messages,
12
asynchrony in responding, ubiquity, and provides a record of conversation. Text messaging allows
13
people to multitask or to communicate in situations where they may not be able to talk. For instance, a
14
person can text message during a meeting. Additionally, text messaging allows for more efficiency in the
15
message being sent as well as providing more time for a thoughtful message (Kelly et al., 2012; Power &
16
Horstmanshof, 2005; Ling & Yttri, 2002; Keaten & Kelly, 2008; Kelly, Keaten, Hazel & Williams, 2010).
17
Several studies have shown that there are also specific functions to communicating this way. Two
18
studies looking at text messaging in Hong Kong and England found that text messaging was a form of
19
‘gift-giving’ where the communication is seen as a way to maintain a relationship (Lin & Tong, 2007;
20
Taylor & Harper, 2003). A Norwegian study found that text messaging for teens was a way to define
21
social boundaries and popularity.
22
The convenience of being able to send quick text messages to people from anywhere and
23
anytime is likely the reason for the increased usage of text messages. Although these studies focus on
24
text messaging, it is likely that similar benefits and increased amounts of usage can be extended to e-
25
mails and social media messaging. Because text communication has become a prominent form of
26
communication, it is likely to be subject to similar issues of miscommunication seen in person-to-person
27
communication as well as modality-specific issues.
28
29
Text Miscommunication
30
With increased communication comes an increased likelihood for miscommunication. Like
31
person-to-person communication, miscommunication is a common phenomenon in text
32
communication. Research has shown that there is a general perception that text communication leads
33
to more miscommunication when compared to person-to-person communication. This perception stems
34
from the lack of nonverbal and contextual cues as well as ambiguity in tone (Johnson et al., 2016; Kelly
35
et al., 2012). Kelly et al. (2018) found in a study of text conversations between romantic partners two
36
main types of miscommunication: referential and affective. These are the same types of
37
miscommunication seen in person-to-person conversations. Additionally, within each type they found
38
subtypes. Several of the subtypes found also seem modality-specific.
39
Within the realm of referential miscommunication, one source was found to be due to the
40
brevity of the message. These types of messages were either a single word or a short phrase where
41

Emoticons and Emojis 6
there was a general lack of shared meaning. Kelly et al. (2018) found that this accounted for 47% of
1
referential miscommunication. They offer one example of this type of misunderstanding:
2
(3)
3
A: It’s over
4
B: You’re breaking up with me?
5
A: No the movie is over LOL
6
In the conversation, the ambiguity stems from the speaker A’s use of ‘it’s’ within a two-word phrase.
7
Without any contextual cues as to the reference, speaker B was left to derive the meaning of the short
8
phrase from either past experiences or some common meaning of the phrase.
9
The other 53% of the referential miscommunications were due to confusion over the topic of
10
conversation. This confusion came from not having enough context to interpret the message. For
11
example:
12
(4)
13
A: What happened?
14
B: What do you mean?
15
A: Idk what you are talking about.
16
Clearly, both people in the conversation were confused about what the topic of conversation was.
17
Although these two types of referential miscommunication are seen in person-to-person
18
communication, they may be more likely in text communication. Text communication, specifically text
19
messaging may facilitate shorter messages. However, there does not seem to be any research directly
20
comparing miscommunication in both modalities to show whether this is true or not.
21
The second type of text miscommunication, affective, seems to be the predominant focus within
22
the literature on text miscommunication. One possible reason for this is that affective meaning may be
23
more susceptible to modality limitations than referential meaning. Affective meaning makes use of
24
nonverbal information such as body language, gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice to help
25
people derive meaning from an utterance (Chen et al., 2017; Filik et al., 2016; Thompson, 2106; Derks et
26
al., 2008; McKenna & Bargh, 2000). These sources of meaning are not available in text communication
27
which may be part of the perception that this is more of a modality-specific issue than referential
28
meaning. Referential miscommunications due to lack of context or short responses can also be seen in
29
person-to-person communication. Although text communication may facilitate shorter responses than
30
would be seen in person-to-person communication, it seems less due to lack of communicative
31
resources compared to affective communication.
32
When looking at affective types of miscommunication, one aspect of meaning that is hard to
33
communicate without nonverbal information is sarcasm (Filik et al., 2016; Thompson, 2016). Similar to
34
irony, sarcasm is generally saying one thing but intending the opposite meaning (Thompson, 2016;
35
Weigand, 1999). Tone of voice, facial expression, and gesture are often tools used in person-to-person
36
conversation to signal that an utterance is sarcastic and a literal interpretation should be ignored
37

Emoticons and Emojis 7
(Subramanian et al., 2019; Thompson, 2016). In Kelly et al. (2012) participants considered texting
1
sarcastic messages dangerous because they felt it increased the possibility of miscommunication. If
2
sarcasm is not detected in a message then that leads a recipient to misunderstand the real meaning
3
behind the utterance. The below text message example between a romantic couple illustrates this type
4
of misunderstanding:
5
(5)
6
A: You’re so annoying (I said this as a joke)
7
B: What?
8
A: I was just trying to be funny.
9
Speaker A was attempting to call speaker B “annoying” sarcastically, but speaker B was unable to
10
interpret the correct tone and meaning. The above example could also be interpreted as an attempt to
11
be humorous, which along with irony, is another aspect of communication that is harder to depict via
12
text (Chen et al., 2017; Thompson, 2016; Stark & Crawford, 2015; Walther & D’Addario, 2001).
13
Research shows that like person-to-person communication, text communication is also
14
susceptible to miscommunication. These errors in successful interpretation of meaning tend to be either
15
referential in nature or affective. Although there are resources that are not available in text
16
communication, it is not without its own resources. Given the preponderance of mobile usage and text
17
messaging, it should come as no surprise that people have found ways around the lack of nonverbal
18
cues. Characters and icons that are available to text users are increasingly used as proxies for facial
19
expressions and emotions as a way to fill this communication gap.
20
21
Emojis and Emoticons
22
Emoticons and emojis have been around almost as long as text communication itself. Emoticons,
23
which is a blend of ‘emotion’ and ‘icons’, have been given various definitions. One definition refers to
24
emoticons as ‘a sequence of ordinary characters you can find on your computer keyboard’ (Sanderson &
25
Dougherty, 1993). However, this definition fails to reference the fact that emoticons are usually a
26
sequence of two or three characters from a subset of available characters and often depict facial
27
expressions (e.g. : ) or : D are used as smiley faces). The first credited use of the emoticon is the smiley
28
face from Scott E. Fahlman in 1982 and was created to indicate jokes (Stark & Crawford, 2015; Dresner
29
& Herring, 2010; Krohn, 2004). Not long after in 1990s Japan came the first emoji, a pictographic
30
character or icon (Pohl et al., 2017; Stark & Crawfor, 2015). Emoji is a blend from the Japanese word e
31
‘picture’ and moji ‘character’ (Emoji, 2013).
32
Because emoticons and emojis provide an inventory of numerous facial expressions, there has
33
been significant research looking into whether they help to disambiguate text communication. Do
34
emoticons function in the same or similar capacity that human facial expressions function in person-to-
35
person communication? Focusing first on emoticons, research shows that they can strengthen
36
expressions, express emotions, humor, sarcasm, and irony (Subramanian et al., 2019; Chen et al., 2017;
37
Walther & D’Addario, 2001; Lo, 2008; Dresner & Herring, 2010; Filik et al., 2016). Like facial expressions,
38
they potentially provide additional cues to meaning outside of the actual text message (Derks et al.,
39

Emoticons and Emojis 8
2008; Thompson & Foulger, 1996). In one study, emoticons were mostly used to express emotion,
1
humor, and to strengthen the action of the message (Derks, Bos, & Grumbkow, 2008). In a study
2
conducted by Walther and D’Addario (2001), participants were asked to read emails which either had a
3
positive or negative message. Each message was either followed by a smiley face :-), sad face :-(, wink
4
face ;-), or no emoticon at all. What they found was that in 85% of the trials, sarcasm was associated
5
with the wink face ;-). Additionally, a message combined with an incongruent emoticon such as a
6
positive message with a negative emoticon was perceived as being more sarcastic. Interestingly, they
7
found no difference between messages with emoticons versus messages without emoticons. This
8
suggests that emoticons may play more of a supporting role rather than enhance meaning. Conversely,
9
Lo (2008) found that when participants were given pure text messages without emoticons, they were
10
unable to derive the correct emotion, attitude, and attentional intents. When emoticons were added to
11
messages however, participants significantly improved on their understanding of the meaning of the
12
message. Unlike the results of Walther and D’Addario (2001), these seems to suggest that emoticons
13
may play more than just a supporting role. Ip (2002) also found evidence showing that emoticons
14
actually strengthen the valence of a message if it is congruent. For example, if a message had a positive
15
message, a smiley emoticon which can be viewed as a ‘happy’ emoticon, increased the positivity of the
16
message. Similarly, Carvalho, Sarmento, Silva, and de Oliveira (2009), suggest that positive emoticons
17
such as the smiley face :), wink face ;), and tongue face :p could indicate ironic messages. In terms of
18
message production, Thompson (2016) conducted a study to determine how users mark sarcasm in text.
19
They found that both the wink face ;) and tongue face :p were used more to mark sarcasm. The data
20
from Carvalho, Sarmento, Silva, and de Oliveira (2009) combined with the data from Thompson (2016)
21
suggests that there is some congruence of meaning between emoticon usage and its actual perceived
22
meaning.
23
Whether emoticon meanings are conventionalized or not introduces a possible hindrance of
24
successful use of emoticons in text communication. If there is no universal agreement on the functions
25
and meanings associated with emoticons then there is a higher likelihood of miscommunication. Some
26
researchers have suggested that emoticon uses are at least to some degree conventionalized (Skovholt
27
et al., 2014; Garrison et al., 2011; Provine et al., 2007). Garrison et al. (2011) showed that placement of
28
emoticons within an utterance are conventionalized. In another study, researchers found a high degree
29
of agreement on the emotions that certain emoticons represented (Walther & D’Addario, 2001). For
30
example, there was 98% agreement that happiness was associated with the :-) emoticon and sadness
31
was associated with the :-( emoticon.
32
Some researchers however argue that emoticons express more than just emotions such as
33
humor and sarcasm. In fact, they argue that emoticons play an important pragmatic role in text
34
communication (Dresner & Herring, 2010). For example, in a message which acts as a request, the
35
addition of a specific emoticon may act to mitigate the request. One example they give is below:
36
(6)
37
A: I would like a noncircumventing solution ;->
38
The example in (6) shows a request for information. The addition of the wink emoticon is used
39
pragmatically to indicate that the request is non-threatening. Skovholt, Grønning, and Kankaanranta
40
(2014) also support the pragmatic function of emoticons. They suggest that an emoticons main purpose
41
is to modify or contextualize a text message. They pragmatically act to hedge a message such as
42

Emoticons and Emojis 9
strengthening or softening the content. A study by Luor, Wu, Lu, and Tao (2010) found that out of 6,000
1
text communications, only 12% were used to communicate emotion, showing supporting evidence that
2
pragmatics may play a larger role than affective meaning.
3
In comparison to emoticons, Chen et al. (2017) consider emojis to be more expressive and
4
semantically rich than both text and emoticons. Given this assessment, it is reasonable to assume that
5
they may carry more disambiguating information and more communicative uses than emoticons. Within
6
this line of thinking, Herring and Dainas (2017) found various functions of emoji use. Like emoticons,
7
they found that emojis were used to modify or mitigate the tone of a message. Kelly and Watts (2015)
8
found that emojis are used sometimes to maintain communication or connection with someone when
9
there are no words to be communicated. Although this research suggests that there are potentially
10
more beneficial uses of emojis that are not available in text alone, other research shows that this does
11
not necessarily reduce the likelihood of miscommunication.
12
Some research shows that emojis may actually hinder communication in some respects. One
13
issue with emojis is that although there is a Unicode standard which specifies the emoji character and
14
name across platforms, the appearances vary across platforms (Miller et al., 2017). Additionally,
15
research has also shown that the interpretation of meaning varies extensively between people and
16
between platforms (Miller et al., 2016; Tigwell & Flatla, 2016). This variation may actually hinder
17
communication rather than aide it. Tigwell and Flatla (2016) conducted research looking at a subset of
18
emojis from the same Unicode characters in both Android and iOS. A first set of participants were asked
19
to fill out an emoji use questionnaire where they were asked questions about how they use emojis and
20
what misunderstandings they encountered. A second set of participants were given the subset of emojis
21
to place somewhere within a two-dimensional valence-arousal space. What they found was that there
22
was a lot of variability between participants on what the emojis meant. However, emojis were viewed in
23
isolation and not in context. Miller et al. (2017) therefore set out to determine whether using emojis in
24
context helped reduce the variability in their perceived meaning and ultimately reduced the likelihood
25
for miscommunication. What they found was that when emojis were within a contextual environment,
26
the potential for miscommunication was roughly the same as when they were in isolation. The results
27
suggest that emojis do not help disambiguate text communication, but in fact may increase ambiguity.
28
One thing to note however is that the majority of research has focused on emoticons rather than
29
emojis. It is possible that similar to emoticons, there may be different tasks that show different results
30
for emoji usage and interpretation. There also does not appear to be a lot of research specifically
31
comparing emoticon and emoji usage. Given the data showing some conventionalization of emoticons,
32
it is reasonable to assume that they may perform better than emojis. The inventory and expressive
33
potential is much greater in emojis than emoticons, suggesting that given enough data, emojis may
34
allow for more expressiveness. However, this also means that emojis have more potential for ambiguity
35
and less likelihood for conventionalization when compared to emoticons.
36
Emoticons and by extension emojis allow text messages to communicate certain nonverbal cues
37
that would otherwise be lost, essentially filling communication gaps. The use of such tools increases the
38
potential that the true intended meaning of a message is received. They allow for certain emotions such
39
as sarcasm and humor to be communicated. They also serve pragmatic functions. Emoticons have the
40
ability to modify and mitigate certain messages when used. Although the studies reviewed here speak to
41
the many uses and benefits of these tools, there is no strong evidence showing that emoticons and
42
emojis actually reduce miscommunication. This is more apparent in emojis rather than emoticons. This
43

Emoticons and Emojis 10
sentiment was also proposed by Dickey et al. (2006) and Hinds and Weisband (2003). In the analysis of
1
text communication within a work environment conducted by Dickey et al. (2006), they concluded that
2
miscommunication was not a result of technological limitations but was attributed to a lack of shared
3
meaning among the communicators.
4
5
Conclusion and Discussion
6
Miscommunication is a common issue not only in person-to-person communication but also in
7
text communication. In both cases, the issue often lies in either misunderstanding the referential
8
meaning or the affective meaning of an utterance. With the widespread use of technology and
9
numerous means for sending text messages it is likely to increase the potential for miscommunication.
10
One type of meaning that seems the most susceptible to misunderstanding in a text environment is
11
affect. This is because nonverbal cues, which are not available in text, are important aspects of affective
12
meaning. In order to fill this gap in communication, emoticons and emojis were created. They give us
13
the tools to be able to express affect while still maintaining the benefits of text communication.
14
Although emoticons and emojis in some contexts may help reduce the potential for miscommunication
15
in other cases they do not and with regards to emojis specifically, may actually increase
16
miscommunication.
17
There is still a lot of room for investigation regarding the role and uses of both emoticons and
18
emojis. The majority of research has focused on emoticons and even still the results are mixed in
19
regards to their main function, their meanings, and whether they actually reduce miscommunication.
20
One route future research could take is in determining what contexts allow emoticon use to
21
disambiguate meaning and what contexts they do not. There is also less research looking at emoji use
22
and even comparing emoji use to emoticons. What differences are there between the two? Emoticons,
23
likely due to their limited inventory, seem to have more conventionalized meanings which likely help
24
interpret meaning more successfully than emojis. Emojis have a much larger inventory that is constantly
25
changing and increasing with every operating system update. Although this creates opportunities for
26
more nuanced meanings it also likely increases the likelihood for ambiguity and miscommunication. It is
27
less likely that emojis have the same conventionalization as emoticons and may rely more on
28
establishing shared meaning more locally within small speaking communities.
29
One aspect that did not seem to be prevalent in the literature is generational differences. In
30
linguistics, it is known that language use can vary based on different factors such as gender, geographic
31
location, and age. For instance, some of the words that a grandparent uses will differ from the words
32
their children use which will then be different from the words that their own children use. This is one
33
part of what drives language change. Because emoticons and emojis have become such an integral part
34
of text communication and its prevalence in all age groups, it is possible that differences will also be
35
seen in their use based on age. An interesting avenue for future research would be to look at the
36
differences between the usage and meanings of emojis between different age groups. I predict that
37
miscommunication is greater when using emoticons and emojis in messages between different age
38
groups.
39
Similarly, research looking at differences in usage based on the other factors such as gender and
40
geographical location may also show differences. Some research has indicated that there are gender
41

Emoticons and Emojis 11
differences in emoticon and emoji usage. Prada et al. (2018) found that women used emojis more than
1
men but did not find any gender differences in emoticon use. Does emoji use then increase
2
miscommunication between genders? The inventory of emojis are probably very similar globally due to
3
their pictographic nature, making comparisons a valid endeavor. I predict that there may be certain
4
emoji uses that change based on geographic location. Perhaps the tongue emoji has a different meaning
5
in one country compared to another.
6
Finally, this review only focused on emoticons and emojis because of their relation to non-verbal
7
cues in person-to-person speech, however there are many more communication tools available. For
8
instance, some research has started to look at non-facial emojis (Weissman, 2019). There is also
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research showing meaningful use of punctuation such as the exclamation mark to indicate sarcasm
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(Dresner & Herring, 2010). In certain smartphones and on different social media platforms, animated
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gifs, pictures, and music are available to use along with text. I have also seen the use of capitalization to
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denote a mocking tone such as, ‘wE cAn DisAgReE aNd StilL bE fRiEnDs’. Text communication has more
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tools now than it ever did before to help communicate different meanings and emotions and combined
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together may help reduce misunderstanding, but more exploratory research is needed.
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