By: Cheryl Lu, Social Media Coordinator
Emoji is a wonderful invention of the digital era. It enables us to send messages with less typing, express emotions visually, and infuse creativity into our conversations.
However, when people communicate with each other digitally, there’s a common mistake we often make: we tend to assume that emoji is a universal language that everyone interprets in the same way. Every year, technology companies introduce new emojis. However, as users incorporate these symbols into their conversations, interpretations diverge, resulting in a myriad of miscommunications. As much as the designers try to make their creations simple and self-explanatory, the greater the variety of emojis, the more ambiguity there could be in the definitions of many of them. Hence the miscommunication in the picture below:
(Source: https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/)
For me, it was a relief to have come across this picture. Because I, like many others , have been in the exact same situation. I was once told that I should switch the ‘????’ in one of my texts to ‘????’ because the former carries more negative undertones, while for my entire life, I had been taking it as a smiling face prior to the incident.
This misuse of emojis portrayed in the picture is most definitely not an independent case. Miscommunication caused by emojis happens all the time if not every day. Here are some factors that could cause this confusion:
Gender
Studies reveal that women in the English-speaking world don’t appreciate the monkey emoji ????. In fact, a few years ago, men who used the monkey emoji were even publicly shamed on Twitter.. A study from 2020 highlights the divergent emoji usage between men and women, with women employing emojis for reactions, while men take them at face value, using them to indicate action. What’s interesting, though, is that under the “I don’t know” category, there are far more men proportionally than women.
Age
We know that we might use emojis differently than our parents’ generation. What about people with less of an age gap? It turns out even millennials and Gen Z can’t see each other eye to eye on the emojis they use. According to a report that came out in 2021, ????, the laughing face with tears of joy, commonly used by millennials to express laughter, is considered outdated by Gen Z and replaced by the skull ????. A similar use of emoji is reported in the use of ????. Apparently, the younger generation is redefining emojis with negative meanings and altering them into “I’m laughing so hard that I cried/am dead.”
Culture
When discussing the use of emoji, a factor that’s easily neglected is culture. It’s worth noting that the studies about age and gender, mentioned above, all reported in English. Studies have found that when interpreting an emoji, people from Western backgrounds tend to focus on the emotions shown on the mouth, while in Eastern cultures, more attention is paid to the eyes. The hand-raising emoji ????♀️is almost exclusively used in the East to show insight due to the strict upbringing of raising hands before speaking in class. The folded hands emoji, ????????, can either be interpreted as praying by those who are religious or simply as “please” or “thank you” by atheists. Pairing a photo of one’s favourite pet with the angle emoji ????????, while can be interpreted as showing affection, can also be interpreted as announcing that the pet has passed away. The most basic smiling face ????, while widely used in North America to indicate friendly motives and soften the tone, is generally considered a passive-aggressive “fine” or “if it pleases you” with a mocking undertone in China. (In fact, in China, the number of emojis that can be used to disdain can go beyond one’s imagination.)
Device
An often-overlooked factor is the device used to send emojis. Similar to how fonts and texts can look different on various devices, emojis have their own “fonts” too. A paper published by the University of Minnesota confirmed the universality of emoji misinterpretation caused by different rendering of devices and platforms. This leads us back to the example mentioned before: the slightest change in the angle of an emoji’s corner of the mouth can imply very different levels of happiness.
(Source: https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/)
Emojis, while a remarkable tool that can bridge digital communication across language barriers, is not without imperfection. As we immerse ourselves in this visual language, the potential for miscommunication emerges due to cultural nuances, age disparities, gender differences, and even device variations. However, despite hilarious or trouble-causing misunderstandings, this is also where the magic lies: Creative ways of interpretation and innovative use of the “characters” is precisely what pushed human language to evolution, and this is where AI can never replace human interpretation: judging and empathizing with live emotions behind each exchange of thoughts and speech.