Has the invention of emoticons and emojis helped with online communicating?

An emoticon is
a representation of a facial expression such as a smile, formed by various combinations of computer
keyboard characters and used to help convey addresser's feelings or message tone. Emojis are the
"posterity" or "successors" of emoticons. They are small digital images used to express emotions or
ideas. The inventor of the first emoticon, which is this typographical combination " :-) ", is considered
to be the American computer scientist, Scott Falhman. He used the glyphs in 1982, simultaneously
assigning to them their connotations. Nowadays, it would be hard to find someone who does not know
what emoticons are. However, does everyone understand their meaning? Do they carry a particular
message, or can they be ambiguous?
The answer, not surprisingly, is it depends. When interpreting an emoji, the factors that have to
be taken into account are; age and gender of the addresser and addressee, context, and relationship
between communicators. What is more, often social ambience of the communicators, or mutual
agreement on icon's meaning matter. Underneath, I present a few analysis of emojis among online
users. NOTE: All screenshots are provided from private sources. The identity of the interlocutors have
been covered in respect of their privacy.

Exh.1.
In Exh.1. we see an online private conversation
between two university classmates.
Grey speech bubble: student A.
Blue speech bubble: student B.
Student A asks whether Student B is asleep. The
smiley emoji with a sweat follows the message
which indicates that this question is asked in
polite, loose way so that the message does not
get an interrogation value. This meaning is
known by the both students and is interpreted
quite literally.
The second emoji sent by Student B shows face
crying because of hard laugh. Although, it is
intended to express amusement by the Student
B’s own behaviour, it does not literally mean
that Student B is crying in reality.
The communication is successful due to mutual
understanding of emojis by the context, and
among youth society.
Exh.2.
This is the conversation between the same students
from Exh.1..
Grey speech bubble: Student A.
Purple speech bubble: Student B.
Topic of the texting is the excess amount of final
exams in a short period of time.
In this example Student B strongly express their
feelings by overusing three different emojis; clown
emoji, crying hard emoji, and empty emoji. To
understand the feelings of the user the mutual
agreement in meaning is needed. So long as heavy
crying emoji can be interpreted as being really sad
or devasted by the situation (this is an exaggeration
in comparison to actual feelings), and empty emoji
can mean helplessness, with clown emoji you need
to have additional knowledge from popculture. This
emoji is connected with particular meme (an image
depicting a joke or funny situation).

Example meme:
Considering the meme
the clown emoji
indicates that someone
is fooling her/himself
with the truth.

In this context, Student B is helpless, emotionally anxious, and feels like a foolish person that cannot
really change the situation so she/he will just put on the fake smile and pretend the work is doable. The
overusage of graphics are intentional to show emphasis, but at the same time the emphasis is ironical,
because it does not reflect literally the reality. Recipient probably to great extent understood the
message, because it she/he is aware of both ambiguous meaning of emojis and has knowledge of
pancultural contexts.
Exh.3.
The fragment Exh.3. comes from
personal conversation between
cousins, male and female.
Age of interlocutors: 20.
Emoji of face with sunglasses among
people of age 12-35 (this is just a
generalization based by personal
observation) is understood as a proud
posture, pleased by her/his action,
achievement, smart answer. It can be
associated with saying “Feel like a
boss.”
The message is understood because of
the knowledge of this icon.
Additionally, the understanding is
confirmed by replaying of the same emoticon typed “traditionally”. The preference of illustration,
whether it is typographical or digital graphic, is depended on the person’s liking. There are cases when
the meanings/ interpretation differ. Also, some people consider “traditional” emoticons cooler then
emojis, or sometimes it is just the effect of fast typing of message.

Exh.4.

In Exh.4., the interlocutors are the same people as

from the example presented above.

The talk is about characters from games and series.

This emoji is openly-interpreted for anyone. In this
case the users clearly not only understand each other,
but also they share similar emotions.

In this example, the used emoji expresses infatuation

and overwhelming feeling in reaction to the picture.
This emoji can also mean confusion, not thinking
clearly, or being drunk.
Exh.5.

Exh.6.

Those 2 excerpts comes from the same person, a 20 years old woman. Th messages were sent to her
best friend. They perfectly depict the use of the same emoticon, but each message has different tone.

Emoji presents a face with watery eyes. Presence of tears, as a natural biological mechanism, are
connected with strong experiencing emotions.

In example Exh.5. emoji added to affectionate message reflects writer’s emotions and strengthens their
value. Here, it has positive quality.

In Exh.6., in combination with massage, icon shows intense concern from the sender. Depending on
situation, this emoji can extensively reflects real feelings of the person. Here, it has not have a positive
quality.

Further, this emoji can also express being overwhelmed by something pretty, cute, pleasant-looking in
a sweet way, for e.g. a reaction to a photo of a puppy. Often this emoji is combined with heart emoji in
order to emphasis the affection, therefore it acquire the value explained with example Exh.5.

Exh.7.
Exh.7. presents short conversation between
two female high school students.
The student asks for study materials. At the
end, there are emojis depicting two hands
clasped together.
This is an example of another ambiguous
icon. In this case, the emojis express sort of
a begging approach, probably the addresser
desperately needs the materials, that is why
she/he emphasises his ask with this emoji.

However, this emoji can also mean the action of high five, or can have religious meaning of praying
hands. Therefore, this emoji needs to be used cautiously.
Exh.8.
Exh.9.

In personal relationships, there is a possibility to invent

an individual meaning to existing emoticon, and the
Exh.9. presents such a case.
The laughing emoji was analysed in Exh.1. and here it
has the same meaning.
The conversation is between two cousins, females, who
live in the same town. Cousin 1 (grey speech bubbles
on the left) thought she saw the other person at the
main square. As it turned, she was mistaken. So the
recipient (the speech bubbles on the right) replayed
with blind woman emoji, as a joke. Exh.10. is from the
same chat, but few months later. Since establishing the individual meaning of blind woman emoji,
now it is used as a joke of implying the other person is blind, or silly for noticing something. The
repetition of emoji is just the sign of agreement with the joke “statement”.

Exh.11

This conversation is between

music/art teacher, who is an elderly
woman with her student, who is 20
years old female. The relationship is
close. The response is to the ask to
give an opinion on the (earlier sent)
poems.
The sentence ends with emoji
blowing a heart. It means “sending
love”. It is considered to be an
online equivalent of “x” put at the
end of written letters in the past.
Exh.12.
Exh.12 is a perfect example of an overuse of
the one emoji.
The chat is between two female best friends,
with significant age difference of 18 years.
The writer on the left uses multiple laughing
emojis to ensure the other side that the
presented disagreement is just for fun. It can
be annoying, especially when two people
know very well each other. This situation
can be driven by the age difference, not
itself, but the fact that the person on the left
is not used to online chatting with people,
therefore, as mention before, the emojis are
intended to ensure the recipient the message
is not filled with negative quality.

Exh.13.
Exh.13. presents
conversation between
two friends in their
20s, the friendship is
new so they do not
know each other that
well yet.

In this case, the interpretation is confusing. Smiley face corresponds to “ : ) “ emoticon, which
allegedly means just a simple smile. Therefore, the message conveyed in the grey speech bubble is
“not every thing is fine, but I manage it somehow”, and the smiley emoji would be used as a calming
addition, so the recipient would not worry too much. Nonetheless, miscommunication occurs. The
recipient of the message is used to interpret this emoji as extremely negative. This particular emoji
among young people means “I give up”, “the fake smile”, “I’m dead inside”. Thus, in this context, for
the recipient this emoji rises the seriousness of the situation, and causes bigger distress and concern
about the friend. This miscommunication results from the early stage of the friendship and lack of
knowledge about the behaviour of the other side.
Exh.14

The interlocutors are the same as in Exh.8. & 9..

Laughing emoji plays similar role as in cases presented above, the

only slight difference can be in intensity of the expression.

The other emojis used in this example are so called “palm faces”.
The meaning is literal – disappointment or embarrassment by
someone or self, that ends with slapping the forehead and
covering the face. What is interesting, is the choice of colour
variant of this icon. The choice variety reflects the visual
appearance of each sender.

Exh.15

This example is a screenshot from family group chat.

Interlocutors:
G - woman in her 50s, aunt, lives in Germany
T – men in his 40s, father
M – woman in her 40s, mother
F – teenager boy, brother
K – woman in her 30s, cousin, lives in Germany
S – man in his 40s, uncle
Conversation takes place after reunion, when everybody
came back home.

The emoji used by G has similar meaning, as mentioned in

example Exh.11., simple “sending kisses to all”.
Adult men, T and S, used thumb up emoji which indicates
conformation of receiving the information from G. M sends
back “kissing face” which is a replay with the same amount
of affection. F sends basic heart emojis, which is a
conformation of receiving the message and express of good,
positive emotions. K uses green heart emoji which as every
other heart emoji expresses love, affection etc., and the
colour choice is just based on the preference.
Interestingly, as a whole we can observe a pattern that men are not as free in expressing strong
emotions as women or children. Moreover, the fact that older people use less or just a few
basic emotions, in comparison to younger generation.
Exh.16
This is a fragment from university student group chat.
Members of this group are males and females in their 20s.

Exh.16 does not contain clear use of emoticons in written

speech. However, this conversation takes place via messenger
app, which has a feature that allows to react to particular
message with emoticon (small emojis in the down right corner
by the grey speech bubbles). The emojis represent various
kinds of laughing face emoji and heart emojis. They
introduced the feature with intention to reduce spam on
sizable group chats. Thanks to that, everyone can react to
anyone without making the conversation messy and cluttered.
This action shows how emojis may seem to be quite an
important accessory in communication to web users in XXI
century.

Exh.17.
Exh.17. is a fragment from a conversation between to
friends.
In the screenshot there is an unusual emoji. Developed by
electronic device company, Apple, this is an emoji
featuring facial movement. When Apple introduced face
scan to their mobile phones, they created a possibility of
not only creating your own personalized emoticon, but also
with face scanning it is able to express exact movement of
your face. There are varieties of animated emojis, for instance as presented in Exh.17, a
dinosaur with heart eyes. The meaning is the same as with basic face with heart emoji, that
implies admiration or astonishment of something.
In conclusion, the arrival of emojis undoubtedly changed online communication. From one
point of view, they allow users to express themselves more precisely. Furthermore, we can create our
own meaning or codes using emoticons. On the other hand, even though they sometimes help convey
our thought more clearly, they are the reason of frequent miscommunications. Reasons for such
occurrences can result from different interpretations, context, generation gap, age difference, stages of
relationship, etc., therefore they are ambiguous in meaning. Moreover, some critics advocate that
emoticons deprive people of language skills, as well as communication skills. Emojis have advantages
and disadvantages, so whether are they needed in the communication or not, is solely depended on an
individual who communicates the message.