We have previously seen how different expressive features can help users to convey meaning in a message – be it literal meaning, tone or emphasis. But as we learned, emojis can help to express non-verbal information like facial expressions or gesture. But are emojis used in non-English contexts? Furthermore – are they being used in languages who are far removed from English in terms of language family and script? And are there other ways for people to convey non-verbal information in online contexts?
Emoji in a Chinese-speaking Context
To answer the first question: yes, emoji are being used in non-English contexts. Let’s take the example of the “doge” emoji, a popular emoji on Chinese social media site Weibo (Xiong 653). The “doge” emoji, likely inspired by the older “doge” internet meme, depicts a shiba inu looking sideways. This one little picture can be used in several different ways.
Firstly, doge can be used to indicate humor. Unlike laughing face emoji, the doge emoji does not look particularly amused. But users have collectively decided that the presence of the doge emoji is a visual marker that the accompanying text is making a joke (654). In a similar vein, users will add doge to messages where they are expressing irony (654). So this emoji is not only used to clarify a writer’s intentions (ie, joking) but also to change the meaning of the message by indicating they are not speaking sincerely.
Adding on to this broad function of doge as being able to downplay utterances, users will also add doge to messages to indicate that they are uninterested in debating a topic further (655). This will often also be accompanied by the lexical phrase “doge save my life”. I find this usage interesting because I believe it’s the first example we’ve seen of an emoji being used to head off or prevent further communication with the writer. But, at the same time it could also be considered a variation of the clarification function. The writer is using doge to clarify their intentions as simply wanting to state their opinion, not to initiate an argument. Doge can be used not only to avoid conflict, but to soften it. Users disagreeing on which pudding they think tastes best can add the doge emoji to their messages to indicate their good faith intentions, and thus minimizing the possibility of their message coming across as aggressive (655).
The example of doge shows us that emoji not only exist in non-English contexts, but seem to have similar functions to many English emoji. Far from being simply illustrative or having a narrow fixed meaning, doge’s meaning and exact purpose differ depending on context (657). But, crucially, these various functions help to facilitate communication between users by conveying intention and downplaying potentially threatening utterances. We can say, in general, that doge is being used to indicate a kind of good-faith playfulness between users. This kind of feeling would be accessible to people when they are speaking face to face, but is lost when the conversation is reduced to writing. The addition of doge helps to reestablish such an atmosphere for users.
Emoji in an Arabic-Speaking Context
Emoji are also being used by Arabic-speakers for a variety of functions. Al Rashdi’s 2018 study looks specifically at two WhatsApp groups being used by Omani Arabic speakers, which resulted in a sample of 42,037 words and 4369 emoji (when counting duplicate emoji as one) (117-118).
The first function of emoji Al Rashdi describes is the indication of emotion (119). Group participants used faces with various expressions to indicate their happiness, sadness, or frustration in relation to the written messages they were sending. This function is also found in English emoji usage.
Beyond indicating emotion, emoji could also be used to contextualize a message (120). Writers added emoji to their messages to clarify their intentions and make messages less threatening and more playful (20). One user, when pointing out another user’s grammatical errors, adding a emoji blowing a kiss to his message to clarify that he was not criticizing the other user so much as teasing him. This aligns with Herring’s analysis of emoticon, as discussed in Week 6. Emoji could also contextualize a message by illustrating volume via the use of the megaphone emoji (120). This specific use is infrequent in English, which may be explained by the fact that Arabic does not have capital/lower-case letters. Capitalization can be used by English-speaking users to indicate loudness, but Arabic-speaking users would need to find an alternative.
Emoji can also carry a sense of action or gesture. In the context of a WhatsApp group welcoming a new member, a string of confetti emoji can act as a replacement for the excitement, enthusiasm or physical actions (hugs, handshakes, approaching the new member, applause, etc) that might take place in a similar situation in real life (121). More concrete gestures, like the thumbs-up/down to express approval or disapproval, can also be shown through emoji (122). Emoji can also be used to signal the opening or closing of a conversation via a waving emoji or a face blowing a kiss, both of which are literal depictions of gestures used in spoken conversation to greet or say goodbye to a person (123).
Users may also send emoji as a way to signal their actions or their presence in a conversation. In a spoken conversation we are aware of who our conversational partners are and whether they’re paying attention to what we’re saying. When communicating online we have no way of knowing whether someone is viewing the conversation while we are, and whether someone has seen a message and is choosing not to respond. At the same time, a person may not always have something they want to add to the conversation. Emoji are a happy medium by which a person can signal they have seen a message. Some of the studied users sent emoji as a way to respond to thanks or compliments, in the same way that a wordless smile or a nod might be used in spoken conversations (122). For the Omani users, emoji could be used to indicate that a group member had seen a message and followed what it had said (in this example, it was a challenge/request to repeat a certain prayer) (124). In these cases, the emoji themselves may not carry any meaning linked to their appearance. The sunflower emoji the Omani users sent to affirm they had completed the prayer challenge could have been replaced with any other emoji without changing the meaning (so long as the other group members were in agreement on the choice of emoji).
The functions of emojis in this Omani sample seem to be similar to the ones we have seen for English and Chinese emoji. They often seem to be used to communicate non-verbal information such as facial expression and emotion, intention, gesture, or even simply presence. The motivation for using emoji, then, is likely the same as for other linguistic communities: it helps bridge the information gap between spoken conversation and written communication, as well as creating a sense of camaraderie, involvement, or intimacy between group members (125).
Letter Repetition: Another Way to Convey Emotion
We’re moving back to English for this last piece. Specifically, we’re taking a more in depth look at letter repetition, to show that emoji are not the only way we can convey non-verbal information to one another.
Non-verbal cues like emoji and letter repetition are context dependent; their meaning is shaped by what has previously occurred in the exchange and what text or other media they are accompanying (Darics 142). Something like letter repetition is recognized as signaling something, but that something is not fixed (142). Gestures, body movement, and facial expression are also context-dependent and have their meaning shaped by the speech they accompany, so it’s not unreasonable to say that letter repetition could carry extralinguistic information in the same way those embodied signals do (143).
What exactly counts as ‘context’? Context, according to Darics, can be defined from two perspectives. The first is that context is created via interaction, and the second is that context is “a set of a priori conditions that affect interactions” (143). In this case, these ‘a priori conditions’ are things like environmental factors or societal knowledge; things that people already have knowledge of when they enter into a conversation with another person (143). So we determine the meaning of a context-dependent factor by drawing on both our knowledge of what has been established in the interaction and our wider knowledge of the socio-cultural meanings such context-dependent factors might carry.
Letter repetition, as we’ve previously discussed, is an expression of non-standard orthography; it’s a way of writing that doesn’t conform to agreed-upon formal standards of writing (144). Traditionally, researchers have approached letter repetition as if it has a direct link to oral language; repeated letters indicate a drawn out pronunciation of those letters (144). But, as we’ve noted in previous posts, some repeated letters are physically impossible to pronounce, as with plosive consonants like ‘bbbbbbb’ or silent letters like the ‘e’ in ‘cuteeeeeee’. Thus, we must conclude that letter repetitions “do not necessarily correlate with the stress or elongation of the spoken versions of manipulated words” (144). Rather, we can now approach repetition through the function it is playing during interactions.
Letter repetition seems to carry an element of “emotional involvement of affect” (145). Take, for instance, an interaction between two users who work together in which one is says she is excited about a new template she created, because now “every[th]ing should take alllllllllllllllloooooooooooootttttt less time” (144). The repetition emphasizes ‘a lot’ in the phrase “take a lot less time”, which we know from context is why she is excited about this new template. Thus, the repetition further expresses her excitement by emphasizing the cause for excitement. Darics agrees, saying the repetition is acting as “an aid for conversational partners about how the verbal messages should be interpreted” (145).
Repetition, as a non-standard element, also invokes a sense of informality. Use of repetition, then, can indicate a desire for a less formal interaction, thus creating feelings of intimacy (145). In some cases, only one participant in an interaction may use repetition (145). In Darics’ example of a conversation between a boss and an employee, the boss uses letter repetition while the employee does not, maintaining a more formal writing style. Here, the boss’ use of repetition allows her to come across as less formal and therefore less threatening to her employee. At the same time, the employee is not downplaying her messages with informal elements like repetition. These two people are then able to invoke (although perhaps not create) a more equal relationship than they have in reality. This reflects work dynamics we may see in real life, where a boss may use a friendly tone or joke around in order to bridge the power gap between them and their employees. The boss/employee conversation further emphasizes to us the importance of viewing repetition in context; what looks like a mismatch of style is actually informed by the power dynamics between these individuals outside of their online communication.
The invocation of informality and subsequent creation of intimacy via letter repetition appears to be a feature shared across the examples provided by Darics. So, although repetition may be used for slightly different purposes within different contexts, it does appear to be used to convey non-verbal information that users would obtain through embodied actions in a face to face conversation. However, Darics notes further study will be needed to better understand all the reasons users may choose to use repetition and what effects it has on interpersonal conversations.
Conclusion
These three pieces illustrate that English-speaking users are not the only ones trying to convey non-verbal information in their online conversations. More than that, using emoji for this function appears to be true across these three very different languages with very different scripts. But what English, Chinese, and Arabic have in common is that their written form cannot, on its own, capture the intricacies and nuances inherent to spoken speech. All three linguistic communities, then, need to find ways to convey these nuances in order to communicate successfully – and as we have seen, they have indeed found some (imperfect) ways to do so.
References
Al Rashdi, Fathiya. “Functions of emojis in WhatsApp interaction among Omanis”, Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 26, no. 1, 2018, pp. 117-126, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.07.001.
Darics, Erika. “Non-verbal signalling in digital discourse: The case of letter repetition.” Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 2, no. 3, 2013, pp. 141-148, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.07.002.
Xiong, Simin. “Pragmatic Function of the “Doge” Emoji on Weibo.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, vol. 637, 2022, https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220131.120.