Emoji and emoticon: the fun and playful little pictures you can add to text messages. But that’s not all they are. As it turns out, these little pictures can be used to convey additional meaning and may actually be fulfilling an important function within digital communications.
Emoji and Emoticons – What’s the Difference?
Although the two terms look like they should be interchangeable, emoji and emoticon actually are different things.
Emoticon is a portmanteau of ‘emotion’ and ‘icon’ (McCulloch 178.) They are the little pictures we make by combining keyboard symbols – things like 🙂 and 🙁 and <3, to type a few. They first arose in 1982 on Carnegie Mellon University’s computer message system (177). Emoticons allowed users to integrate these little icons into their texts, as opposed to having a picture attached to the end of a post.
Emoji originated in Japan in the late 1990s, and the term is a combination of ‘e’, picture, and ‘moji’, character (180). These are the premade illustrations that people often add to texts – things like a thumbs up, a tree, a laughing face, and so on.
Emoji were actually preceded in Japan by kaomoji, which were more similar to American emoticons in that they used keyboard symbols to make faces or pictures (179). The ‘kao’ in kaomoji means face. Unlike American emoticons and their sideways faces, kaomoji tended to be face on: 0.o and ^_^ are two examples.
But what’s interesting is that we have emoticon and kaomoji developing around the same time in two separate environments (although the two would come into contact later, leading some American users to use both kaomoji and emoticon). This could be a coincidence, or it could suggest that both were fulfilling some communication need that users had.
Where do Emoji & Emoticons show up?
Emoji & emoticon tend to appear in synchronous contexts, like texts or instant messages, rather than in more asynchronous contexts like emails or blogs (Herring 261). They also show up less often in conversations that are more serious or work-focused, suggesting that they may carry a sense of informality, light-heartedness, or playfulness (259, 261). With these context, we can guess that their function is likely related to the needs of speech-like interpersonal writing. Within a conversation itself, they’re more likely to appear at the end of sentences or utterances than mid-thought. They can appear paired with text or by themselves.
Analyzing Emoji & Emoticon
There are several ways we can approach emoji and emoticon. On the most basic level, they seem to represent facial expressions. Early researchers took this to mean that emoji and emoticon illustrate emotion. Hence, by using emoticon or emoji, we’re conveying information about our emotions that would otherwise be unavailable to our audience (250). However, the “emoticon = emotion” reading breaks down when we examine it further. The 😛 face or 😉 face, for instance, represent facial expressions but don’t represent specific emotions (252). Furthermore, emoticon are sometimes used in contexts where the content of its surrounding text don’t necessarily match the emotion of the face – like in “Stayed up all night working, I’m so tired right now :)”. So to get to the bottom of what these little faces and pictures are doing, we’ll have to look into more complex explanations.
Some people have described emoji as their own language. But this is clearly not true, since we cannot communicate solely in emoji (McCulloch 157-158). This is for two reasons. First, emoji do not always have singular, fixed meanings, but can have their meaning shaped by the text surrounding them and vice versa (Logi 5). As such, emoji become less and less intelligible as they are disconnected from language (4). Secondly, emoji and emoticon are very bad at illustrating abstract concepts; things like tense, mental faculties, and so on. They also don’t allow us to easily specify through the use of determiners (this, that, these, etc) or proper names (New York, IKEA, etc). So if emoji and emoticon aren’t emotional icons, and they are a language, what are they?
The Illocutionary Force Approach
By returning to the first emoticons from 1982, we can see that they were assigned a specific function from the beginning. Amidst joking discussion of speculative situations at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy, 🙂 was suggested as a way to mark statements of humor so as not to confuse or concern other users (McCulloch 178). Over time, this narrow usage would expand, and 🙂 would be used as a marker of general positive sentiment or sincerity (178). So, emoticons were being used not to illustrate facial expressions, but to convey the intention of the author to readers (Herring 255-256). Herring describes emoticons as “indicators of illocutionary force”. Illocutionary acts are acts that are carried out through their being spoken: promises, threats, joking, and so on. Emoticons can clarify what sort of illocutionary act a writer is performing – a joke, a promise, a request, and so on.
If we accept that emoticon and emoji convey intention, many of their uses in context make more sense. A wink in spoken conversation denotes some double meaning or inside joke, and a winking face like 😉 can add an attitude of humor to a message (“I’m blaming you” versus “I’m blaming you ;)”). So emoticons can be used to make utterances less threatening or serious (258). Emoticons that appear by themselves function in very similar ways, and either modify previous messages or express a general sentiment (259).
This approach also gets around another issue with the emoticon = emotion hypothesis: facial expressions tend to be unconscious or unintentional, while typing is very much intentional (261). But a 🙂 in a message doesn’t feel like a forced smile, because it’s not; it’s a statement of intention (257). Although Herring focuses on emoticon, we can see how this approach can also work for emoji, seeing as how they also include pictures of facial expressions. The variety of emoji available may also allow users to further specify or clarify their intentions (for instance, a simple smiling face and a face with a wide grin might be used to indicate different amounts of humor or excitement).
The Gestural Approach
Several authors have suggested that emoji and emoticon function as replacements for the gestures we use in face to face conversation (Herring 260, Logi 4, McCulloch 157). Obviously, gestures and other body language are absent in written texts. In formal texts, this may not present much issue, as they often call for a neutral tone, disembodied from the actual writer. But if users are trying to write text that has speech-like qualities, they might want the ability to write gestures into their messages as well.
McCulloch specifically divides emoji into two categories with two different corresponding types of gesture. First there are emblematic emoji, which function like emblematic gesture (161-162). Secondly, there are more illustrative emoji that function as co-speech or illustrative gestures (166).
Emblematic gestures are those that have a fixed form and meaning. They also often can be named, as with giving a thumbs up/down, flipping someone off, the ok symbol, zipping the lips, and so on. Some emoji are also emblematic; the thumbs up/down emoji, of course, but also the eggplant (which by itself has sexual connotations) and the various flag emoji (which represent a country or identity). They have been given some intrinsic and fairly fixed meaning; people aren’t using a thumbs down as a way to point down, and they aren’t using the Canadian flag to represent maple trees. Emblematic emojis can be repeated, perhaps representing a repeated or drawn-out action. Multiple thumbs-up could represent holding a thumbs-up for a while, while multiple kissing face emojis could symbolize blowing multiple kisses (171). These fixed gestures, like emoji, are used intentionally in conversation (187).
Illustrative or co-speech gestures are much more fluid. They’re difficult to describe in writing, but we use them all the time to illustrate size, shape, direction, and so on; they reinforce and support what we’re saying (166). The same gesture could mean two different things depending on the context: swiping one’s hand could indicate direction (come here/go away), size (this big/this small), emotion (dismissiveness, surrender, excitement), and so on. Illustrative emoji do the same thing in re-inforcing the subject and perhaps adding to the mood (“Happy birthday!” versus “Happy birthday!” paired with the balloon emoji, cake emoji and present emoji) (167). They also can be used simply to signify that the other participant is reading the conversation and continues to be interested in it, similarly to how body language or meaningless vocalization might be used in spoken conversations to show active listening (189). For the most part, researchers have not found that people use long strings of illustrative emoji to tell complex stories. The vast majority of emojis, in general, appear by themselves or in short strings, and they usually appear alongside words or are short replies to previous messages (169). When illustrative emoji do appear in sets, they are usually simply repeated or placed with matching emoji (snowman/snowflake, different colored hearts, and so on) and the order they appear in doesn’t appear to change their meaning (170). Again, this points toward an illustrative/clarifying function rather than a communicative function.
The Social Semiotic Approach
Both of the aforementioned approaches focus more on the function of emoticons and emoji in a text; the social semiotic approach is a closer analysis of how they can be used to create meaning, and what sort of meanings they can create (Logi 2). Meaning is created through users’ choices and the interactions between those choices within a text (5-6). So, researchers need to consider the literal text, the literal emoji/emoticon (specifically emoji in this paper), and how those two interact to create a full meaning (6-7).
Emoji can interact with text in several ways; they can appear alongside words or phrases to reinforce their literal meaning, they can replace a word or words, or they can reinforce an attitude or judgment found in the literal text (14). In some cases, text gives emoji meaning, while emoji don’t add much to the meaning of the text. The reinforcement of literal meaning can be seen in the example of “Incheon Airport” paired with an airplane emoji (7). Additionally, this example shows us that in some cases the text assigns meaning to the emoji, while the emoji itself does not assign a meaning to its accompanying words. The airplane emoji could refer to a literal airplane, or to any number of related concepts like a pilot, flying, a trip, or an airport. When paired with the text, the user assigns the “airport” meaning to the airplane emoji (7). However, the emoji only has this fixed meaning temporarily, and later responses within the same conversation could assign it a different meaning (ie, “Hope you enjoy your trip!” paired with the airplane emoji would give the emoji the meaning of “trip” rather than the previously assigned meaning of “airport”) (14-15).
Emoji paired with text can create a number of kinds of meanings beyond reinforcing the literal meaning of a text. To further study this, Logi and other researchers collected texts from students and interviewed them about how they used emoji (8). They were then able to analyze the types of meaning created by the collected texts. Some of these categories of meaning included attitude (the user’s positive or negative feelings towards something), graduation (intensity of attitude), involvement (identification with a group) and so on (8, 11-12). Emoji, then, are definitely not limited to literal or emotional meaning only.
Emoji and text can also interact in a more collaborative way (17). The message “Me & My worst frenemy” paired with the heart emoji indicates a specific type of attitude towards the referent (‘frenemy’) that we could not obtain from just the text or emoji on their own (19). Similarly, emoji can act to add information about a situation described in text. Adding a cellphone emoji to the message “I can see how ‘interested’ everyone is” lets us know that the disinterest that the user is actually referring to likely involves people being on their phones rather than paying attention to whatever the event is (18).
In short, emoji appear to be able to support and help express a variety of different meanings within a text. In some cases they are superfluous, while at other times their inclusion clarifies or adds to the literal meaning of the surrounding text.
The Popularity of Emoji & Emoticon
Humans have liked adding images to our texts for a long time, from the illustrations on medieval manuscripts to the little doodles we add to cards or letters (McCulloch 174-175). In that sense, emoji and emoticons are simply the most recent incarnation of textual adornment. But, as shown above, emoji & emoticons are also serving to clarify communication (188). They also tend to coexist with other expressive textual features, like nonstandard spellings and letter repetition (185). So in a sense, we could say that emoji and emoticons are popular and widespread for the same reason these other expressive features are widespread: because they’re providing some layer of additional meaning that the words by themselves do not (192).
Despite the fact that they are being used for similar, if not identical, purposes, emoji and emoticon don’t seem to be in competition with each other (185). This could be due to user preference – some people just prefer the look of a 🙂 over an emoji face – or it may be due to other factors, like technological support of emoji (Herring 260). Further research would be needed to determine whether there are specific linguistic, demographic, or environmental factors that influence the choice between emoticon and emoji.
References
Dresner, Eli, and Herring, Susan C. “Functions of the Nonverbal in CMC: Emoticons and Illocutionary Force.” Communication Theory, vol. 20, no. 3, 2010, pp. 249-268. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01362.x
Logi, Lorenzo, and Michele Zappavigna. “A Social Semiotic Perspective on Emoji: How Emoji and Language Interact to Make Meaning in Digital Messages.” New Media & Society, Sept. 2021, doi:14614448211032965.
McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet : Understanding the New Rules of Language. Riverhead Books, 2019. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=nlebk&AN=1617183&site=ehost-live.