The different functions of emojis

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The different functions of emojis

The pragmatic use of five emojis in London and New York

De olika funktionerna av emojis

Den pragmatiska användningen av fem emojis i London och New York Stefan Rupar

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences English

English III: Degree Project

15 hp

Supervisor: Peter Wikström

Examiner: Marika Kjellén

Fall 2018

5

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Title: The different functions of emojis: The pragmatic use of five emojis in London and New York

Titel på svenska: De olika funktionerna av emojis: Den pragmatiska användningen av fem emojis i London och New York

Author: Stefan Rupar

Pages: 26

Abstract

Emojis are useful and efficient tools in computer-mediated communication. The present study aims to find out how English-speaking Twitter users employ five specific emojis, and if they utilize them for the same pragmatic functions. The five emojis were chosen based on earlier research on the subject. One of them was deemed unambiguous and four were deemed ambiguous in previous studies. To investigate whether these emojis are ambiguous and if they are used for several pragmatic functions, a corpus was made by collecting tweets from Twitter. 100 tweets were gathered for each emoji: 50 from New York and 50 from London. Each tweet was analyzed in order to see what function the emoji served in each tweet. Another objective was to find out if cultural differences had any importance for the pragmatic function of the emojis. Three of the four emojis that had been deemed ambiguous by previous research were considered to be ambiguous in the present study as well, as they displayed a multitude of different pragmatic meanings. The single emoji that was considered to be unambiguous by previous research, was used in a consistent manner in the present study, which confirmed the theory that it truly is unambiguous. The results also showed that cultural influences do play a role in how people use emojis for different pragmatic functions.

Keywords:

Emoji, ambiguity, culture, Twitter, pragmatic function, computer- mediated communication

Sammanfattning på svenska

Emojis är användbara och effektiva verktyg i digital kommunikation. Denna undersökning syftar till att ta reda på hur engelsktalande Twitter-användare använder fem specifika emojis, och om de utnyttjar dem för att förmedla samma pragmatiska funktioner. Fem emojis valdes utifrån tidigare forskning i ämnet; en av dem ansågs entydig och fyra ansågs tvetydiga i tidigare studier. För att undersöka om dessa emojis är tvetydiga, och om de används för flera pragmatiska funktioner, gjordes en corpus genom att samla in tweets från Twitter. 100 tweets samlades in för varje emoji; 50 från New York och 50 från London.

Varje tweet analyserades för att se vilken funktion emojin hade i varje tweet. Ett annat syfte var att ta reda på om kulturella skillnader har någon betydelse för vilken pragmatisk

funktion emojin tjänar. Tre av de fyra emojis som i tidigare forskning ansetts vara

tvetydiga kan betraktas som tvetydiga även i denna studie, eftersom de visade på en mängd

olika pragmatiska betydelser. Den emoji som ansågs vara otvetydig i tidigare forskning

visade sig användas på ett konsekvent sätt även i denna studie, vilket bekräftar teorin om

att den verkligen är entydig. Resultaten av denna studie visade även att det finns en

kulturell påverkan på hur människor använder emojis för olika pragmatiska funktioner.

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Nyckelord: Emoji, tvetydighet, kulturellt inflytande, Twitter, pragmatiska funktioner, digital kommunikation

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1. Introduction and aims

Technological advances have allowed people to communicate with each other through the internet with ease, via social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. However, there may be difficulties when people try to convey their emotions, display sarcasm and convey a certain mood through text-based messages. Using certain emojis might help with these issues. Using a “thumbs up” emoji 👍 after writing “Ok.” or using the “face with tears of joy” emoji😂 after writing “haha!” might be a way to lighten the mood and set a different tone to the conversation. According to Na’aman, Provenza, and Montoya (2017, p. 137), emojis have various purposes within text-based messaging; they can serve as content words (e.g. nouns, verbs, adverbs or other content words), or to enrich grammatically complete sentences in order to set a certain attitude. Using laughing or smiling emojis to accompany positive or funny messages may serve as a good indicator of one’s mood, just as angry or frowning emojis serve to indicate a negative connotation. However, using emojis to supplement already complete sentences should be done with caution, because there is a risk that the reader has a different way of interpreting them.

Since emojis have such a broad set of functions, it should not come as a surprise that they have become as popular as they have. Giving people the ability to express their current mood in a message through a simple click of a button is a guaranteed way to gain recognition. A notable example of this is that the “face with tears of joy” emoji 😂 was named “the word of the year” by Oxford dictionaries in 2015, as recognized by (Ljubešić and Fišer, 2016, p.82). In account of Oxford dictionaries being such a respectable dictionary, bestowing such attention to an emoji is rather extraordinary. Their reasoning was “ was chosen as the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015 “ (Oxford Dictionaries, 2015). The reasoning is significant, because it means that the emoji carries such a variety of meanings and depth that it was deemed worthy of this nomination.

But this also raises a concern. Small pictures displaying faces which are doing various facial expressions are quite prone to multiple interpretations, which would ultimately in turn lead to miscommunication.

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1.1 Aims

The aim of the present study is to investigate the degree of ambiguity of certain emojis, which would ultimately give us a clearer insight on how people interpret certain emojis and how they use them in spontaneous instances. Another point of interest of the present study is to investigate whether cultural influences play a role in how emojis are interpreted. The paragraph below outlines the research questions which the present study is centered around.

RQ 1: In English-language Twitter discourse, do Twitter users employ facial emojis to perform a narrow and consistent range of pragmatic functions, or a wide and possibly contradictory range of pragmatic functions?

RQ 2: Does culture play a part in people’s use of certain facial emojis?

These RQs will be answered by collecting and analyzing tweets from two cities on different continents: New York City (NYC) and London, following a specific set of parameters. The results from the analysis may provide an insight into the pragmatic functions that are communicated through the use of emojis.

2. Background

Emojis originated from emoticons, which are very simplistic versions of emojis. Emoticons have the same function as emojis, but instead of using small pictures which portray a certain image, punctuation marks are used to create imagery. These icons made their debut in 1982 when a computer scientist named Scott Fahlman made the smiley “:-)” and frowny face “:-(

“to use as indicators to if someone was making a joke or not. The term emoticon is quite conveniently a blend of the two words emotion and icon. (Dresner & Herring, 2010, p. 249).

Emojis and emoticons are similar in certain ways, mostly in overall function, which is to add a certain flair or function to a written message. The connection between emojis and emoticons is also noticeable when using certain software programs. For example, whilst typing in a Word document, the emoticon “;)” will become “😉” if typed, and “:)” will become

“😊”. Emojis were originally created in 1998 by a Japanese telecommunication worker named Shiketaga Kurita, and the purpose was to implement emojis into their telecommunication’s system. Shiketaga was supposedly an avid reader of manga comics, which gave him inspiration for his creations. Also, the fact that Shiketaga is Japanese affects the etymology of the word. The Japanese term for emoji is “絵文字”, which literally means picture-word (Danesi, 2016, p. 2)

Using images to convey phrases, ideas, concepts and general meaning is not a new concept. Humans have been using imagery to convey meaning and depict words for quite a

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while, with one example being paleolithic cave drawings (Sampson, 2015). However, despite English not being a pictographic language, there are still instances where imagery is accompanied with the English language, namely emojis. The emojis have, as mentioned before (see Section 1.), different functions, mainly as mood-setters, tone givers and overall enhancements to text-based communication.

Below, section 2.1 will outline previous research on emoticons and emojis in computer-mediated communication, chiefly on what their role is in the virtual world. Section 2.2 will focus on the pragmatic functions of emojis in computer-mediated communication.

2.1 Previous research on emoticons and emojis in computer-mediated communication

Communicating with someone by standing in front of them and talking differs quite a bit from writing someone a message via a computer or cellular phone. When talking, all is not communicated verbally, as people tend to get a part of their point across using nonverbal features. Voice tones, hand and body gestures, and facial expressions are indicators that the listener has to observe in order to grasp the entirety of what the speaker is trying to communicate (Wikström, 2017, p. 45). Since these actions are practically impossible to perform through written language, there are alternatives to fill the void of nonverbal features in written language. As previously mentioned, emoticons are the predecessor of emojis and Dresner and Herring (2010, p. 251) make the claim that “Emoticons are almost universally conceived of as nonverbal indicators of emotion.”

As mentioned above, emojis may seem like simple, colorful pictures, but in fact, they carry many pragmatic functions. One of them is the face-to-face speech act, which basically means that some emojis help with displaying certain nonverbal actions that might be used in a conversation between two people. Na’aman, Provenza, & Montoya (2017, p. 137) provide a good example of this: “Omg why is my mom screaming so early🙄”. Na’aman et al. (2017, p. 137) categorize the function of the emoji in this example as ‘multimodal’ with the purpose of enriching the sentence. The “rolling eye emoji” 🙄 may seem a bit redundant in the sentence above, but the sender of the message wanted to indicate their current mood, which was annoyed. The sender might not have rolled their eyes if this conversation took place in real life, but it would have been a lot easier to interpret the sender’s mood by listening to their tone of voice.

Another interesting pragmatic aspect about emojis is code-switching. Tseng and Cashman (2015, p. 1) define code switching as the act of switching languages or dialects in a single conversation. To do this, the two people talking should either be bilingual or multi-lingual. Danesi (2016, pp. 96-97) claims that using emojis correctly requires some sort of pragmatic competence, which means that switching between alphabetic usage and emoji usage efficiently is a form of code switching. Sending ‘happy’ emojis to one’s sixty-year-old

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boss, without having a close relationship, might be a bad idea as this may be perceived as immature and unprofessional. However, if the boss is someone close, the emojis might actually work as a mood enhancer and give a friendlier tone to the conversation (author’s example).

Lastly, another aspect of pragmatics regarding emojis is the ambiguity aspect. This aspect is the most important one for the present study. To decipher how people view and interpret emojis is a complicated matter, but Miller, Kluver, Thebault-Spieker, Terveen, and Hecht (2017, pp. 7-8) conducted a study where they examined the same emoji across several platforms (e.g. Apple, Samsung and Microsoft) to see how often people misconstrued the emoji, both with textual context and without. The misconstrual scores were based on a sentiment analysis, which is a test of how people interpret the overall meaning of the emojis. Then, the different results were compared and interpreted to see if people have a similar view on how to interpret said emojis. Each participant either got a number of tweets that featured emojis or stand-alone emojis to perform a sentimental evaluation. They then ran the same test with several other emojis to see how the various emojis’ misconstrual scores compared to each other. Some of the findings were that “face with tears of joy” 😂 and “relieved face” 😌 were found to be ambiguous and hard to interpret without textual context. Another emoji that showed results of ambiguity was the

“grinning face with squinting eyes and cold sweat”😅. As mentioned above, emojis have drawn inspiration from manga comics, and Figure 1 is a very good example of that. The image of a face with a grin and a large sweat drop is an indication that the character is feeling discomfort and/or embarrassment.

Figure 1. Example of anime sweat-bead.

An assumption that could possibly be made, is that a majority of western emoji users are not that familiar with manga comics, and therefore might lack contextual knowledge to

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understand the conventional meaning and connotations of the sweat-bead in the context where this emoji originated.

Some emojis could be considered obvious and unambiguous in terms of meaning, such as 😊 and ☹. However, Weissman and Tanner (2018) claim that people have a hard time interpreting them. This may be explained by the fact that people view some emojis as indicators of irony. Weissman and Tanner (2018) show interesting results that correlate to this. One of the sentences which they gave to their participants was “The cake she made was terrible”, and the sentence was paired with the 😊, ☹ or 😉 emoji. The participants in the study could then answer if the emoji was correctly matched with the sentence, mismatched or used in an ironic way. Their results show that the emoji mostly interpreted as an ironic response was the 😉 emoji. However, the other two emojis were also used in examples in which the participants viewed them as indicators of irony. This means that the emoji changed the meaning of the whole sentence. The straightforward emojis may suffer from the same issue; people may give them some ulterior meaning. Researching these particular emojis could provide an answer to how people actually view them.

Another aspect that the present study focuses on is whether the geographical location of tweets affects what meaning the emojis are supposed to represent. Barbieri, Kruszewski, Ronzano, and Saggion (2016, p. 4) conducted a study to see if the semantic meaning of emojis matched in four different corpora (British English, American English, Spanish and Italian). They concluded that the meanings were fairly similar across the four corpora and that nothing in particular stood out of the ordinary. The present study will test their theory by comparing tweets from both the US and the UK to see if the use and interpretation of emojis is the same despite the cultures being somewhat different

2.2 The pragmatics of computer-mediated communication

The way people communicate online and how they communicate in person is different in many ways. Some of these differences, and the part that emojis play in filling these holes of information has already been mentioned above (see Section 2.1) Similarly to this, Yus (2011) investigates a related area, namely the purely pragmatic aspect of computer- mediated communication and face-to-face conversations.

A very important factor affecting computer-mediated communication is inference.

Yus defines the term inference as “the process by which an assumption is accepted as true or probably true depending on the truth or probable truth of other assumptions” (Yus, 2011, p.

7). This is also applicable to emojis because if a social media user assumes that an emoji is supposed to be interpreted in a certain way, it becomes a truth to them. Then, if this social media user continues in their use of a particular emoji in certain contexts, other users of the same social media might be exposed to that particular emoji interpretation and they might adopt that interpretation as their own truth.

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3. Methods

For the present study, five emojis were selected. They were investigated to determine for which pragmatic functions they are used and whether some emojis carry a certain ambiguity regarding their meaning. That is, if people share an opinion on how each emoji should be used, or if the contextual usage varies from person to person. A quantitative approach will be taken, mainly examining tweets which feature the emojis selected for this study. What follows is a more detailed description of the methods that were used.

3.1 Data collection and design

One of the five selected emojis is a very straightforward one, namely “smiling face with open mouth” 😃.According to the Unicode descriptor of the emoji, it is clearly smiling and

displays a positive front. The normatively expected usage of it should be when someone is happy about something. Wood and Ruder (2016, p. 78) claim that the “😃 “emoji is an indication of joy and that the majority of people use it for that purpose. The remaining four emojis were selected on the basis that they have been found to be ambiguous (Miller et al., 2017, p. 7). Consequently, they might be interpreted in different ways, leading to

miscommunication and confusion. These four emojis are: “grinning face with squinting eyes and cold sweat 😅”, “relieved face 😌”, “smirking face 😏” , and finally, “face with tears of joy

😂”. The five emojis discussed above were examined and assessed according to their level of ambiguity. One hundred tweets were examined for each emoji and divided into various categories (further explanation of the categories can be found in section 3.2) and then their prevalence in each of the cities was compared.

The process of acquiring tweets from New York and London was done by geo-tagging the tweets to those specific locations. The option of tagging the tweets to a specific location was made possible by Twitter’s “advanced search”, which allows the user to search for tweets made in a specific location. This special search option allowed for a corpus to be made which contained exactly 250 tweets from NYC and 250 tweets from London.

By using Twitter’s “advanced search” option, filters were used to give an accurate result. The tweets were sorted by “latest”, which produced the latest tweets instead of tweets which are a result of algorithmic preferences. Under the filter “language”, English was chosen in order to ensure that only English-language tweets were retrieved. Aside from using the “advanced search” option to produce optimal results, certain criteria were also incorporated to optimize the process. No retweets were used, which ensured that nothing got grossly taken out of context, because the original posters account would have to be analyzed in order to understand the original tweet. No tweets that include a video were used, because there is an inherent chance that people interpret the video in various ways,

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which would affect the results. Each example is used in its original form, without any kind of alterations.

3.2 Analytical procedure

In order to acquire a well-founded interpretation of each tweet, an identical analytical procedure was done for each of them. Firstly, the context to which the tweet applied had to be found, either by searching through replies or doing internet searches for the things that the Twitter users were writing about. Secondly, the tweets were deciphered in order to obtain the original meaning from the written message, which made it possible to identify the pragmatic function of the added emoji. Lastly, each of the tweets went through a final check to see if there might be some additional meanings that allude to sarcasm or perhaps some inside joke that lacks context. The lack of context could possibly alter the interpretation of such tweets and produce another result than the actual meaning. If the meaning of the tweet is too unclear, the tweet would have been deemed inconclusive.

Each tweet was categorized, in order to study the overall use of each emoji. The categories into which the tweets were placed, were created whilst analyzing the tweets. The categories were the following: happy, funny, bragging, flirtatious, smug, sarcastic, tired of something, sad, embarrassed and confused. However, a considerable amount of the tweets had a multitude of meanings and emotions. Categorizing each tweet with all the emotions that are present in a tweet would have been an impossible job, since it is a matter of personal interpretation. Because of this, each tweet that was analyzed was put in the category that the researcher of the present study personally thought made the most sense, leaving the sub emotions that are present in the tweet untouched. Also, all tweets that featured an emoji which was deemed arbitrary and perhaps part of a series of other emojis without an apparent connection, were deemed inconclusive.

One aspect of the research that proved to be problematic was the interpretation of the various tweets. The analytical work in the present study was conducted by a single researcher and this could possibly have affected the results. There could be room for human error, misinterpretation and the possibility that other researchers would interpret some tweets differently. Another aspect that could affect the validity of the geo-tagging process are tourists. Both New York and London generate a lot of tourists each year. People from all over the world visit these two cities, and an assumption could be made that there is a large number of tourists in each of the two cities at any given time. Therefore, some of the 500 tweets that were analyzed might have been written by tourists. The problem was very hard to circumvent since a lot of Twitter users do not write nation of origin or residence on their Twitter account.

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4. Analysis and results

Below, each subheading will show results from a particular emoji. The subheadings will start with a general overview from the results. Examples for each category from each of the five emojis will be displayed and explained. Lastly, a brief discussion will take place, mainly discussing the differences in results between New York and London. The emojis will be discussed in the order of least ambiguous to the most ambiguous, according to my results.

4.1 Results for “grinning face with open mouth” 😃 emoji

As shown in Figure 2, each tweet that was analyzed used the same pragmatic meaning of the

😃 emoji, namely as an indicator of joy and an overall state of happiness. In the overall 100 tweets that were collected and analyzed, there were no signs of discrepancies and each Twitter user had the same interpretation and usage of the emoji. These results line up with the findings in the Wood and Ruder (2016, p. 78) study, which also show that people have an easy time identifying the 😃 emoji as a marker of joy. As can be seen in Figure 2, the results from the two cities are identical, which indicates that culture is insignificant in the interpretation of this particular emoji. The pragmatic meaning of the 😃 emoji does not differ amongst the 100 gathered tweets.

Figure 2. Pragmatic use and comparison New York-London for the grinning face with open mouth 😃 emoji.

All tweets using the emoji are positive and have a happy meaning attached to them. The

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tweets that were gathered were happy in themselves and did not need the 😃 emoji to be perceived as happy messages, but the emoji helps with conveying the happy emotion and lightening the mood of the message or conversation. Usages of the “happy” function that were found in the tweets which featured the 😃 emoji are explained below.

Examples (1) and (2) illustrate the use of this emoji with the function ‘happy’:

(1) What you’ve been dreaming about, the promises God put in your heart, they are about to come to pass. Get ready, favor is coming, healing is coming, abundance is coming, victory is coming!!! 👏👏👏 😃

(tweet from NYC)

(2) @user-Good morning Magda and Happy Friday 😃 (tweet from London)

The message of the text in (1) has a positive and encouraging tone. The 😃 emoji solidifies the happy message by using imagery of a smiling face. The message in (2) is a reply to a tweet that said, “Good morning world!” It has a very happy tone and wishes the other user a happy Friday. The emoji helps in expressing the happy emotion.

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4.2 Results for the “face with tears of joy” 😂 emoji

The results for the 😂 emoji were very consistent, in that almost every analyzed tweet used the 😂 emoji with the same pragmatic function. From the combined 100 tweets, a huge majority (n=99, 99%) used the emoji as an indicator for something that is funny. One single tweet (1 %) was deemed inconclusive. Figure 3. illustrates the various uses of the 😂 emoji and a comparison between New York and London based Twitter users’ results.

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Figure 3. Pragmatic use and comparison New York-London for the “face with tears of joy” 😂 emoji

Each of the aforementioned tweets that could be analyzed, used the emoji in a context where something is funny. Miller et al. (2017, p. 7) claimed that the 😂 emoji is ambiguous and that people use it for different pragmatic functions. The findings in the present study directly contradict their claim, since the results display a consistent and even usage of the same pragmatic function. There are no signs of cultural influences in these results, since twitter users from both cities use the emoji for similar purposes. Usages of the “funny” function that were found in the tweets which featured the 😂 emoji are explained below.

Examples (3)-(5) illustrate the use of this emoji with the function ‘funny’:

(3) Million dollar pose 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 (tweet from NYC)

(4) STHOP IT!!!! 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 (tweet from NYC)

(5) @user- Piers Morgan vegan rant this morning had me in stiches 😂 @piersmorgan (tweet from London)

The written text in (3) was posted in addition to a picture of a group of people making silly poses. The poster is joking about the poses that they are making, and the joke is accompanied by the laughing emoji. The written text in (4) was posted in addition to a picture that was making fun of Mike Tyson’s lisp. The user is also making fun of Tyson’s lisp by purposely misspelling “STHOP”. The words “stop it!” carry a very serious tone. But in this case, the spelling error and laughing emojis make it very clear that the person is in fact making a joke. The message in (5) is a reply to a tweet mentioning Piers Morgan. The user says that Morgan’s last rant was really funny and had him laughing.

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4.3 Results for “relieved face” 😌 emoji

The results from the New York tweets and the London tweets regarding the 😌 emoji differ

in some ways. As can be seen in Figure 4 which illustrates the various uses of the 😌 emoji, the New Yorkers were fairly consistent in their usage, the most common function being to express a joyful and happy attitude (n=43, 86%). In fact, it was commonly used in the same fashion as the 😃 emoji (see Figure 2). A single tweet (n=1, 2%) was used as indicator that the twitter user was flirtatious. Six tweets were deemed inconclusive (12%).

The London based tweets, on the other hand, were a bit more scattered when it came to the pragmatic usage of the emoji. Similarly to New York, the majority of the London based Twitter users (n=28, 56%) used the relevant emoji as an indicator of joy. The remaining categories were composed of indicators of “bragging” and “that something is funny” which totaled the remaining tweets (n=16, 32%) that could be analyzed. It is notable that the majority of Twitter users from both cities have the same pragmatic usage for the

😌 emoji, which is as an indicator of joy. Six tweets were deemed inconclusive (12%).

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

New York London

Happy Funny Inconclusive Bragging Flirtatious

Figure 4. Pragmatic use and comparison New York-London for the “relieved face” 😌 emoji

When it comes to the 😌 emoji, there are clear signs of consistency in the gathered tweets from New York with a total of two different uses. The London based tweets show a total of 3 different uses. This lines up with the claim made by Miller et al. (2017, p. 7) which stated that the 😌 emoji is prone to ambiguous usage. Their conclusion agrees with the present study’s results to some degree, since the Twitter users in total have four different interpretations of the emoji. One the other hand, the NYC based tweets and London based tweets share one

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point of consistency, namely the “happy” category. It is the largest category in both cities, but other than that, the use of the 😌 emoji differs in the two cities. There are uses of the 😌 emoji in the London users’ tweets that do not occur in the NYC based tweets, namely the

‘bragging’ and ‘funny’ usage. The different uses may indicate that some cultural influences are at play affecting the use of this emoji. Barbieri et al. (2016, p. 4), argue that cultural influences between BrE and AmE play a minor role and the emoji usage in terms of

pragmatic functions should not differ between the two. The present study shows that there may nevertheless be some differences as to how people from varies cultural backgrounds use the 😌 emoji. The various usages that were found in the tweets which featured the 😌 emoji are explained below.

Examples (6)-(8) illustrate the use of this emoji with the function ‘happy’:

(6) My baby’s birthday coming up and of course I’m more excited than him. 💙 😌 😌 (tweet from London)

(7) @user -thanks king! 😌 (tweet from NYC)

(8) I made about 3 lifelong friends in college 😌 (tweet from NYC)

In (6), the user expresses that she is excited and happy for the upcoming birthday and complements the written message with 😌 emojis and a single blue heart. In (7), the user posted a selfie and received a compliment, the tweet in (7) is his response. He is expressing gratitude towards the other user and expressing it by using a mixture of written text and the

😌 emoji. In (8), the user is stating that she acquired 3 long-lasting friends in college, and this is something that she is happy about. She ends her message with the 😌 emoji, which acts as an indicator of joy. These 3 examples all share similar pragmatic usages of the 😌 emoji. Although they are very similar, they are not identical. Joy and happiness may be the decisive feature of each emoji, but when analyzing the context further, several sub emotions are displayed through the emoji. Some examples of these sub emotions are: The message in (6) might display some feelings of modesty, (7) might be displaying feelings of gratitude or modesty and (8) is showing a hint of bragging.

Examples (9) and (10) illustrate the use of this emoji with the function ‘bragging’:

(9) How swag is this dashing outfit 😌 (tweet from London)

(10) @user- I was on a 6 game winning streak 😌 (tweet from London)

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In (9), the user posted a picture of himself wearing a new outfit. He covered his own face with an enlarged emoji, which leaves the focus on his outfit. He is basically asking for confirmation that his outfit is looking good, which is accompanied by the 😌 emoji to display his satisfaction and need for confirmation. The twitter user in (10) responded to a person that said that he was on a 4-game winning streak and that the server that hosted the game went down. The person in (10) responded with a bragging tone, trumping the original poster’s record.

Examples (11) and (12) illustrate the use of this emoji with the function ‘funny’:

(11) @user-We should vote on whether we should vote to have a referendum 😌 (tweet from London)

(12) Securing a babes without twitter so you can tweet about them in peace 😌 (tweet from London)

The user in (11) is adding to a conversation about the referendum and is making a joke about their indecisiveness. As mentioned, the written text is a joke and the emoji is used as an indication that the tweet is funny. The user in (12) is making a joke that she will either get a partner/have a partner that does not have twitter, thus making her able to post tweets about them without them being aware. The emoji is once again used as an indicator that the tweet is funny.

Example (13) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘flirtatious’:

(13) @user- Not at all, wassup 😌 (tweet from London)

The user in (13) is responding to a Twitter user that said that “all good girls are taken”, her response implies that she is a good girl and that she is available. The last part of the written text indicates that she is flirting with him and the emoji helps to further the flirtatious tone of the message.

4.4 Results for the “smirking face” 😏 emoji

The 😏 emoji showed quite a bit of ambiguous usage. As can be seen in Figure 5, the New Yorkers were mostly split between using the emoji as an indicator of flirtation (n=38, 76%) and an indicator of happiness (n=11, 22%). The remaining tweet (n=1, 2%) used the emoji as an indicator of sarcasm. However, the tweets that were gathered from London, showed a greater number of different categories. Similarly to New York, the dominating category was the flirtatious one (n=20, 40%), although the percentage was lower. The second biggest category was also in line with the New York results, namely the happy use (n=13, 26%). The rest of the uses were exclusive to the London tweets and there the emoji was used as an indicator for smugness (n=7, 14%) and that something is funny (n=6, 12%).

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18 40

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

New York London

Flirtatious Happy Sarcasm Smug Funny Inconclusive

Figure 5. Pragmatic use and comparison New York-London for the “smirking face” 😏 emoji

Although the London tweets regarding the 😏 emoji featured some uses that were absent in the New York tweets, the two most common uses were the same, namely an indicator of flirtation, followed by the category happiness. This indicates that people from both London and New York view the emoji fairly similarly and that the cultural difference plays a minor role in the usage of said emoji. However, even though uses for the emoji follows a similar pattern for tweets from both cities (see figure 5.), the multitude of different uses of a single emoji shows that there is a discrepancy in how people use the 😏 emoji. This supports the results of Miller, Theubalt-Spieker, Chang, Johnson, Terveen & Heecht (2016, p. 265)

according to whom the functions of the 😏 emoji have a high response variation. Once again, the London based tweets feature several uses that are absent in the New York based tweets, which suggests there might be cultural differences playing a role in emoji usage. The various usages that were found in the tweets which featured the 😏 emoji are explained below.

Examples (14) and (15) illustrate the use of this emoji with the function ‘flirtatious’:

(14) @user- Such a beautiful woman 😏 😏 😏 (tweet from London)

(15) @user- Yasss ur the dream!! 😏 😏 (tweet from NYC)

The tweet in (14) is a reply to a woman’s selfie, basically giving her a compliment and flirting with her. The tweet in (15) is a reply to a picture of a woman, giving her a compliment and flirting with her. The tweets in this category were very similar to each other. The emoji was often accompanied with a message which contained compliments and flirtatious undertones.

There were even some instances where the emoji was the whole message, as a reply to a

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picture of someone, which could be indicating that the emoji itself without any context is enough to convey a flirtatious message.

Example (16) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘happy’:

(16) Came to #consensusInvest with a few objectives – this was one of them.

Achievement unlocked 😏 @user (tweet from NYC)

The written text in (16) was accompanied by a picture of the user together with someone at a convention. She says that one of the goals of the visit was to get a picture with the other person, and she is happy now that she got it. The emoji serves as an indicator that she is happy.

Example (17) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘sarcastic’:

(17) Yeah, I guess you could say I’m a triple threat 😏 a. Anxiety disorder

b. Cat allergy c. Ashy all the time

(tweet from NYC)

The user starts off by indicating that she is a triple threat, which is a term that usually means that someone is good at three separate things. She then goes on and lists three negative things. The written text itself is sarcastic and her point would have gotten across without the emoji, but the emoji helps with accentuating the sarcasm and puts a lighthearted tone on the tweet.

Example (18) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘smug’:

(18) @user- 5 in a row 😏 (tweet from London)

The user is a football player, and someone tweeted that he scored touchdowns in 4 consecutive games, to which the user replied that it was in fact 5. He is obviously proud of his achievement and the text merely corrects the original poster’s mistake. The emoji adds a layer of smugness and a boastful tone.

Example (19) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘funny’:

(19) @user- I think so. But you just wanted to show off the table you prepared for your “friend” init 😏😂

(tweet from London)

The user is replying to a picture which displayed a table full of home cooked food. The user is jokingly implying that the original tweeter is lying about having a friend over for dinner. The message is lighthearted and the emojis assist in setting that tone.

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4.5 Results for the “grinning face with squinting eyes and cold sweat”

😅 emoji

The 😅 emoji showed the most ambiguous usage of the five selected emojis. As previously discussed (see section 2.1), the emoji originates from manga comics, which most westerners most likely have little knowledge about, resulting in an ambiguous meaning of the emoji. As can be seen in Figure 6, the New York and London based tweets share few similarities.

In the New York tweets the most common use of the 😅 emoji was as an indicator of embarrassment (n=14, 28%). The two uses that followed closely were instances where the emoji was used as an indicator that something is funny (n=11, 22%) and that one is tired of something (n=9, 18%). Uses that were indicators of bragging, happiness and that someone is sad, were of equal size (n=3,6%), as were the flirtatious usage and the confused usage (n=2, 4%).

The London based tweets showed a bit more consistency. They had fewer uses which signifies a more consistent usage compared with the New York based tweets. In the London based tweets, the most common use of the 😅 emoji was to indicate that something is funny (n=23, 46%). The following uses followed in descending order: embarrassment (n=10, 20%), happiness (n=8,16%) and being tired of something (n=6, 12%).

25

20

15

10

5

0

New York London

Happy Funny Embarrassed

Tired of something Inconclusive Bragging

Flirtatious Sad Confused

Figure 6. Pragmatic use and comparison New York-London for the “grinning face with squinting eyes and cold sweat” 😅 emoji.

Although both groups of tweets regarding the 😅 emoji have the usages “embarrassment”

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and “something is funny” as their two most common ones (see Figure 6.), the rest of the data is very scattered, and the New York based tweets introduce a couple of uses that were absent in the London tweets. This strongly justifies Miller et al.’s (2017, p. 7) claim that this emoji is highly ambiguous and vague. The number of uses present shows that people use the 😅 emoji in a number of different ways and that they use the emoji to a wide range of pragmatic functions. Moreover, there are uses that are present in the London tweets that are absent the New York tweets. Similarly, there are uses in the New York tweets that are absent in the London tweets. This indicates that people from London and New York, to some degree, have a different interpretation of the 😅 emoji. However, it should be taken into consideration that the sample size used in the present study is rather small, which could ultimately mean that the results displayed in Figure 6 are due to chance. The results are nevertheless a

contradiction to Barbieri et al.’s (2016, p. 4) claim that cultural influences play a small role in the meaning and usage of emojis. The various usages that were found in the tweets which featured the 😅 emoji are explained below.

Examples (20) and (21) illustrate the use of this emoji with the function ‘funny’:

(20) Problem: I like wearing tinted lip balm but I also like burying my face in my scarf. 😅

(tweet from NYC)

(21) @user- Right, Mexico is paying for it 😅 😅 😂 😂 (tweet from NYC)

The user in (20) is making a joke and the message has a funny undertone. The accompanied emoji helps with setting the funny and light tone of the message. The user in (21) is replying to a tweet made by Donald Trump, regarding the border wall he is supposedly building between the US and Mexico. The user is making a joke on his expense.

The two featured emojis act as enhancers to signify that the joke is funny.

Example (22) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘happy’:

(22) First final exam coming up at 12 and I’m feeling pretty good especially since the Thunder got that revenge win last night. Gonna play some Red Dead Redemption before I head out 😅

(tweet from London)

The user’s message has a happy tone throughout and it is clear that the user is naming positive things that are happening in his life. Since the emoji is at the end of this very positive message, the only logical conclusion is that the emoji itself is positive and enhances the happy message.

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Example (23) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘embarrassed’:

(23) @user- No mean for offence sorry 😅 (tweet from London)

The user is not a native English speaker and misunderstood the original posters tweet and replied to her message with a nonsensical reply. She told him that she did not understand it to which he replied with the message above (23). He is clearly embarrassed for the misunderstanding that he caused, which ultimately leads to him apologizing. The added emoji represents a feeling of embarrassment and awkwardness, much like the original manga interpretation (see figure 1.)

Example (24) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘tired of something’:

(24) Tomorrow I’m drinking until I can’t feel my face this semester was stressful 😅 (tweet from NYC)

The user is complaining about her school, and the emoji is used to express the feeling that she is sick and tired of it. The emoji is used to express that exhausted feeling.

Example (25) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘bragging’:

(25) My stuffed shells were so good last night I can’t wait to eat more for lunch 😅 (tweet from NYC)

The written text itself is self-explanatory. However, the meaning of the message may be interpreted in various ways. One interpretation could be that she is genuinely happy, or that she is subtly bragging about her cooking abilities. I believe that the second option sounds the most plausible, since the first option seems like a very meaningless tweet to post.

Interpreting the emoji and meaning as the second option, the tweet acquires some sort of meaning and gives it some validity, since there is a specific reason for posting it. The emoji itself has the pragmatic meaning of fortifying the bragging attitude.

Example (26) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘flirtatious’:

(26) @user- Act up, you get snatched up 😅 (tweet from NYC)

The user is having a conversation with a girl and both were being flirtatious with each other throughout the written exchanges. She referred to herself as a “bad girl”, to which he replied with the message in (26). The term that he uses, “snatched up”, is a slang term that means that he wishes to enter a relationship with her. The message itself is flirtatious and the emoji is perhaps used to lighten the mood, making possible rejection easier on himself.

Example (27) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘sad’:

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23 (27) My baby hates to cuddle 😅😭😭 (tweet from NYC)

She is sad about the fact that her baby hates to cuddle with her. The emojis are used in order to show that she is sad and, in some way, imitating crying. There is a possibility that the user got mislead by the giant sweat bead and thought that the sweat bead was a tear.

Example (28) illustrates the use of this emoji with the function ‘confused’:

(28) I don’t understand this introduction thing Snation is doing😅 (tweet from NYC)

The user is stating that he is failing to understand something. The emoji itself is signifying just that, and perhaps putting a little playful touch on the message

5. Conclusion

Emojis are often used in the company of text in computer mediated communication, but the fact that they do not have a definite meaning attached to them leaves them open to various interpretations which in turn leads to a variety of different usages. However, this does not apply to all emojis, as the present study found that the "grinning face with open mouth"

emoji is very unambiguous and that people in general use this emoji for the same functions.

This also confirms the claim made by Wood and Ruder (2016, p. 78). The results in the present study also partly support Miller et al.’s (2017, p. 7) claim regarding to the ambiguity of certain emojis. For instance, the claim that the” grinning face with cold sweat” 😅,

“relieved face” 😌, “smirking face” 😏emojis are ambiguous would mean that people use them in different contexts and pragmatic meanings. The twitter users from the present study were very liberal in the use of the ambiguous emojis and used them to fulfill various functions that they thought would fit the context of their tweet. The usages made by the Twitter users were very wide in the sense that they could use the same emoji to convey even contradictory messages, for instance the 😅 emoji which was used to display both happy and sad pragmatic meanings (see Figure 6). On the other hand, Miller et al. (2017, p. 7) stated that the “face with tears of joy” 😂 emoji shows signs of ambiguity, while the results from this study show the direct opposite, namely very similar usage from all the gathered tweets (see section 4.2).

Results regarding cultural influences and how these influences may alter the usages of the pragmatic functions of the emojis, vary slightly. Some emojis are used in a similar way in both groups of tweets, sometimes even identical usages (see Figure 2.), but the overall trend is that both New York and London based tweets contain some uses that are absent in the tweets gathered from the other city. This is an indication that cultural differences could play a role in how these Twitter users use the more ambiguous emojis (see sections 4.3-4.5).

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This inconsistency disconfirms Barbieri et al. (2016, p. 4) claims that cultural differences play a minor role in deciding the pragmatic functions of emojis.

When it comes to future research, there are a lot of subjects regarding emojis that are relatively unexplored. For instance, there is a constant influx of emojis, which have the purpose of including members of society that previously lack emojis depicting them, such as people from all over the world that are not Caucasian, physically disabled people and pregnant people. Future research that studies how these emojis are used, to which extent and by what demographics, would fill a gap in current research and perhaps show some interesting results.

Another interesting topic is the age aspect. How does the age of a person affect their emoji usage? A point of interest could be to find out if different age groups use emojis to the same extent. Another approach would be to study the choice of emoji to see if people from different age groups prefer to use different emojis.

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The different functions of emojis