Given that the use of emojis/smilies is a recurring topic here on tildes alone, this does not surprise me. But it is interesting to see it being studied. Though what I am missing from the article...
Given that the use of emojis/smilies is a recurring topic here on tildes alone, this does not surprise me. But it is interesting to see it being studied. Though what I am missing from the article is if they also looked at context and frequency of use.
For example, I am of a generation where you'd use smilies and emojis mostly to accentuate things on the internet and then mostly in chat. I am now at the point where at work I am also used to them, but only when used in measured amounts. Whenever I see a text riddled with them, I am likely to take the entire text a bit less seriously, and I will also start to ignore the emojis in question.
Simply because the underlying assumption is that someone did not put much care and though in the message and is just carelessly putting silly images in them.
Which might not even be the case. Just earlier today @DefinitelyNotAFae made a comment here, showing the opposite. It actually showcases how the use of (to me) a lot of emojis can actually be a sign of someone putting a lot of care into making sure the right tone and emotions are conveyed.
Cross culture communication is already difficult, text based communication can just be downright messy.
Edit:
Big typo fix, "I am not at the point" -> "I am now at the point"
Yeah people using emojis are choosing them like they choose words IME, that could be with a lot of thought or very little but they're still parts of communication. Do I get annoyed when Facebook's...
Yeah people using emojis are choosing them like they choose words IME, that could be with a lot of thought or very little but they're still parts of communication.
Do I get annoyed when Facebook's laughing/crying ( 😂 )emoji is slightly tilted back thus implying a greater amount of laughter than I want to send? Yes. Yes I do.
I was thinking about "whenever I see a text riddled with them"... and what this might mean, and glossing over them. It's interesting! I probably did that too. The thing I noticed reading the post...
I was thinking about "whenever I see a text riddled with them"... and what this might mean, and glossing over them. It's interesting! I probably did that too.
The thing I noticed reading the post with many emojis is that if you actually take the time to look at each emoji and try to incorporate that tone or meaning into the text, it slows your reading down A LOT. I sometimes found myself rereading the previous sentence with the context of the post-pended "😬" like a detective, trying to figure out what about the previous words would lead to a face like that.
So I agree, when someone uses a lot of emoji, usually there is a lot of thought going into that. But if you or I is reading something quickly, we might just skip them because it is so much faster, and you can usually get the gist without them.
IMO, there's a balance between using emojis to help with tone, vs just words. Too many emojis, and people tune out. But just a few can heighten the experience.
If referring to mine, I probably wouldn't have used that IRL but was doing a bit of an exaggerated version of my actual ways of "sound like a bitch" mitigation. It's mostly a grimace because of...
I sometimes found myself rereading the previous sentence with the context of the post-pended "😬" like a detective, trying to figure out what about the previous words would lead to a face like that.
If referring to mine, I probably wouldn't have used that IRL but was doing a bit of an exaggerated version of my actual ways of "sound like a bitch" mitigation. It's mostly a grimace because of the tone struggle, indicating some awkwardness on my part.
Emoji use is a lot like (other) slang use, you get used to how it's used in your communities and then it gets confusing when you branch out to other communities.
Yeah! Totally! I think if it was something like a :) or the smile emoji, it would be like reading a common word, where your brain doesn't have to think that hard to incorporate it into the...
Yeah! Totally! I think if it was something like a :) or the smile emoji, it would be like reading a common word, where your brain doesn't have to think that hard to incorporate it into the message. You get used to the ones you see in your communities. Even so, do you experience reading a message that has a lot of them, and it slows you down? Or not at all?
Oh I struggle with messages with a ton of emojis in them sometimes as often they're being used to punctuate every sentence or thought or being used in ways that don't make sense to me. Lots of...
Oh I struggle with messages with a ton of emojis in them sometimes as often they're being used to punctuate every sentence or thought or being used in ways that don't make sense to me. Lots of 🙏🙏🤲🤲🤲 will also tend to throw me off but that may be because I don't dona lot of praying anyway. Those are both ways neither me nor my friends communicate.
And at the same time I might do something like this in the right context.
✍️ Use ✍️ emojis✍️at✍️@semitones✍️
(As I'm making a, usually sarcastic, reminder to myself)
I think it's easier that since I "encoded" the emoji with meaning I can interpret it with no effort, but then I also understand the use of emoji by those I regularly communicate with. An aubergine is just an aubergine until it's a 🍆 in the right context and such.
I believe my first encounter was as “emoticons” or “smilies” as they were known on late-90s, early-00s internet forums (phpBB, vBulletin, InvisionBB, etc). The first time I used them heavily was...
I believe my first encounter was as “emoticons” or “smilies” as they were known on late-90s, early-00s internet forums (phpBB, vBulletin, InvisionBB, etc). The first time I used them heavily was in chat though, when I encountered AIM by way of iChat (which had smilies that are close relatives to modern Apple emoji) which later became Messages/iMessage.
It’s been interesting to see how their usage has changed over time.
I mean think about all the information in "Ok." "ok" and "ok." or even "Okay"... Like, it's easy to see that emojis are used differently when words are used differently as well.
I mean think about all the information in "Ok." "ok" and "ok." or even "Okay"...
Like, it's easy to see that emojis are used differently when words are used differently as well.
In my circles as well. I've come to associate it with "thoughts and prayers", eg, "I'm not going to provide any actual help, good luck going it alone".
In my circles as well. I've come to associate it with "thoughts and prayers", eg, "I'm not going to provide any actual help, good luck going it alone".
This is my favorite emoji, because it's so versatile, even if you just interpret it as folded hands (which it is). It can mean "thanks", "please", "sorry", and many other things. Basically just...
This is my favorite emoji, because it's so versatile, even if you just interpret it as folded hands (which it is). It can mean "thanks", "please", "sorry", and many other things. Basically just add it to the end of any message and it'll most likely work.
That is "person with hand folded", https://unicodeplus.com/U+1F64F. Usually used to signify prayer or meditation, some folks do use it for a high five. I've seen some systems differentiate the two...
That is "person with hand folded", https://unicodeplus.com/U+1F64F. Usually used to signify prayer or meditation, some folks do use it for a high five. I've seen some systems differentiate the two by giving the high five different cuff colors.
Okay I actually read most of the actual study and I have some thoughts. Im irked by the use of "accuracy" in this study, when they mean "adherence to Western intent". They acknowledge this in the...
Okay I actually read most of the actual study and I have some thoughts.
Results showed a general accuracy advantage for UK compared to Chinese participants,
Im irked by the use of "accuracy" in this study, when they mean "adherence to Western intent".
They acknowledge this in the discussion
Similarly, Guntuku et al. [50] analysed the emoji posted on Twitter and Weibo in four countries and demonstrated that in some areas, Eastern people tended to refer to the same thing with entirely different emoji compared to Western people, and this is also supported by Kejriwal et al. [49]. Thus, Chinese participants may show lower ‘accuracy’ because they tend to use these emoji in a different way.
But this is so significant that the whole "why" of this study becomes questionable.
It's like if a reverse team asked English speakers to match "melon eating" emoji to the "correct" emotion.
The WeChat emoji they chose for "happy" is marked 呲牙 on the app , a tooth-bare grin, from an idiom which originated from poetry describing corpse-eating dogs(chinese language online encyclopedia) -- modern usage doesn't carry quite as negative of a connotation, but it's more like a "s--t eating grin" than mere expression of happy contentment. It should actually correspond with this American emoji 😁
Additionally,
In Eastern cultures, especially China, “one must NOT show ones' teeth when smiling” is a strict rule of discipline for women that has lasted thousands of years, [...] In common Western smile emoticons such as :-) or :), the mouth is exaggerated with a crimped line whereas the eyes are simplified as two dots. As a contrast, Japanese use smile emoticons with a simplified mouth but crimped eyes, e.g., (ʌ.ʌ) or (ʌ_ʌ)[...] Apparently, compared with Westerners, Japanese and Chinese people value the eyes much more highly than the mouth when they try to express their happiness in an abstract way. (PubMed)
It's well established that not all things are 100% culturally universal, facial expressions being one of them, we shouldn't be surprised western made emojis don't all map.
Similarly the disgust one they chose is 吐, to throw up, this one 🤮. Maybe subtle difference.
Also this study says somewhere that emojis aren't used as much by Chinese people...it's true but I wanted to say that's because they use a lot of "stickers": individualized packs of often animated small graphics that replace regular emojis. Sort of like line and WhatsApp stickers.
I can respect this motivation, much like how even the most "obviously accepted" things re worth studying to put numbers and data to an idea. I just think this study isn't very well designed.
especially when the entire intention of the study was to examine the differences in interpretations throughout different cultures.
I can respect this motivation, much like how even the most "obviously accepted" things re worth studying to put numbers and data to an idea. I just think this study isn't very well designed.
I dislike that it has become common to pluralize emoji. They were created by NTT DOCOMO, and the name is literal Japanese—e (picture) + moji (character)—a language that doesn't use plurals. It...
I dislike that it has become common to pluralize emoji. They were created by NTT DOCOMO, and the name is literal Japanese—e (picture) + moji (character)—a language that doesn't use plurals. It just seems equally weird sounding as pluralizing kanji, sushi or double-pluralizing spaghetti. (Similarly, I'm seeing more and more people pluralize software, which is a non-countable noun, such as music. You wouldn't say "I listened to three musics today.")
The Japanese word emoji doesn't get pluralized but the English one can be pluralized or not! Just like you might say "three musics" in when the English words are pulled into another language.
The Japanese word emoji doesn't get pluralized but the English one can be pluralized or not! Just like you might say "three musics" in when the English words are pulled into another language.
If you're seeing native English speakers pluralize it, it's not being used as a non-count noun by those speakers anymore. Language changes, and that's that -- even within the linguistics...
Similarly, I'm seeing more and more people pluralize software, which is a non-countable noun, such as music.
If you're seeing native English speakers pluralize it, it's not being used as a non-count noun by those speakers anymore. Language changes, and that's that -- even within the linguistics department at my university there was a divide in older people using "data are" vs younger people using "data is". And neither of us was wrong -- it's just a language change in progress!
It's also just not that rare for plural forms of words to be borrowed into English as singular words that then get English pluralization added back on. Panini comes to mind. How emoji is pluralized still seems to vary a lot atm anyway (I use both "emoji" and "emojis" as the plural form, swapping between them inconsistently).
Such is the ever-evolving nature of language! But I get the dislike. When there is a literal "right" way, its annoying that people insist on using an incorrect variant. My personal dislike is when...
Such is the ever-evolving nature of language! But I get the dislike. When there is a literal "right" way, its annoying that people insist on using an incorrect variant. My personal dislike is when people describe being left "on read" instead of left "unread" in texts and messages.
(Or maybe they're literally describing that the other person has read the message, and left a read receipt but not replied? Hence, left "on read"? Actually now I'm not sure. Do you know?)
I would like to note that people have been pluralizing software for a long time -- in hacker subculture. First as wares and then later of as warez.
Yeah as @wervenyt said, it's that they're not replying to you after a message you feel they should have replied to. (Often when one or both of you are upset with the other.)
Yeah as @wervenyt said, it's that they're not replying to you after a message you feel they should have replied to. (Often when one or both of you are upset with the other.)
Cool! Learned something new today. :) The confusion is that when I do this to other people, I make sure not to open the notification, so that in their text app, or whatever, the message appears...
Cool! Learned something new today. :) The confusion is that when I do this to other people, I make sure not to open the notification, so that in their text app, or whatever, the message appears unread, so, "left unread". It's plausible deniability.
But it looks like these other people are less careful, they read the message in the app, so it gets marked as read, and "left on read"
It just so happens both of these are homonyms in english... unread/on read. So I thought other people were also doing the unread trick I do, which I thought was common.
I absolutely understand the confusion, if I didn't work with Gen Z I probably would also be confused. Others are doing your trick too. But also, being left on read is perceived as a deliberate...
I absolutely understand the confusion, if I didn't work with Gen Z I probably would also be confused. Others are doing your trick too. But also, being left on read is perceived as a deliberate slight. So it's not just that they're less careful, though it could be, but it can be an intentional snub.
I find this so interesting and why and how we adapt words that originate from other languages. I’ve recently been learning about and researching etymology. One of the biggest things I’ve learnt is...
I find this so interesting and why and how we adapt words that originate from other languages.
I’ve recently been learning about and researching etymology. One of the biggest things I’ve learnt is about how language is a constantly changing and evolving thing and that’s not a bad thing. Cultural dialects and new words and the changing meaning of words is just a part of our cultures and a natural process. I find it fascinating.
There’s this silly quote from the film infinity war where one character says the name of a place the other character has never heard of before. D: “That’s a made up word”. T:”All words are made up words”. And it rings very true because all language and grammar rules and spelling rules are just things humanity has made up along the way to make it easier to communicate
Neither are really acceptable in standard Japanese. ~たち is exclusively used for people (eg. 私たち), and ~ズ isn't really standard parlance. You might see it in loan words, but as Japanese doesn't...
Neither are really acceptable in standard Japanese. ~たち is exclusively used for people (eg. 私たち), and ~ズ isn't really standard parlance. You might see it in loan words, but as Japanese doesn't normally distinguish between plurals except via context, it wouldn't be considered accepted for anything else. You would still say えもじ in Japanese for the plural, without the ズ suffix.
Any chance this was based on my comment in another thread this morning where I admitted to my gender-based emoji bias (and acknowledged I need to overcome it)?
Any chance this was based on my comment in another thread this morning where I admitted to my gender-based emoji bias (and acknowledged I need to overcome it)?
I would consider that pretty doubtful. It would be odd to start with giving me an article relevant to a single comment in a large discussion, at the very least.
I would consider that pretty doubtful. It would be odd to start with giving me an article relevant to a single comment in a large discussion, at the very least.
The unicode faq for emoji answers some of the questions in this thread, saying that using the plural "emojis" is acceptable (yay linguistic descriptivism!) and that "The meaning of each emoji can...
The unicode faq for emoji answers some of the questions in this thread, saying that using the plural "emojis" is acceptable (yay linguistic descriptivism!) and that "The meaning of each emoji can vary depending on language, culture, or context, and may change or be repurposed over time." also stuff about flags, which is very interesting (geopolitics!)
I can strongly recommend anyone that has even a passing interest in how modern technology has affected (written) language read the book Because Internet.
I can strongly recommend anyone that has even a passing interest in how modern technology has affected (written) language read the book Because Internet.
I sometimes wonder if me using yellow emoji triggers the younger, race conscious people or whether the decision to create all skin shades of emoji is performative tech industry hoopla, and nobody...
I sometimes wonder if me using yellow emoji triggers the younger, race conscious people or whether the decision to create all skin shades of emoji is performative tech industry hoopla, and nobody actually cares.
I use black emoji because I'm black and its nice to convey ethnicity even when not relevant to a conversation. Specially in predominantly white environment where everyone will default to picture...
I use black emoji because I'm black and its nice to convey ethnicity even when not relevant to a conversation. Specially in predominantly white environment where everyone will default to picture me as white.
If everyone used black emoji suddenly my use of black emoji would lose meaning. That wouldn't offend me, but it would remove the utility of something that conveys my ethnicity in an amusing way.
In the case of yellow emojis, given that they're defaults, I don't think anyone would ascribe meaning to that.
Out of interest why do you think it’s nice to convey ethnicity? I’m open to other points of view but I worry about the negatives about identity politics. I find people bind together on ethnic...
Out of interest why do you think it’s nice to convey ethnicity? I’m open to other points of view but I worry about the negatives about identity politics. I find people bind together on ethnic lines, and in unrelated conversations this can lead to group think, and subconscious racism (in all directions). But then again, I might miss a positive aspect.
Also I would argue that it’s conveys skin tone, not ethnicity. There is no way to distinguish between Indians, Mexicans, south East Asian, or mixed race. So the signal is different in an important way.
There are situations when it's nice to convey ethnicity because otherwise people have a tendency to attribute the default ethnicity, and that leads to a bunch of other assumptions that someone...
There are situations when it's nice to convey ethnicity because otherwise people have a tendency to attribute the default ethnicity, and that leads to a bunch of other assumptions that someone who's in the default group is unlikely to perceive. The fact that it's not really possible to determine country of origin does not negate the expressiveness of color as an indication of ethnicity, as ethnicity is not the same as nationality. But it would be nice to have a tiny flag next to usernames like you'll see in some multinational subreddits. Or a preferred pronouns indicators as they have on Beehaw.
Could you give an example of assumptions that might be made? I can’t think of any off the top of my head that would be relevant in the context of not knowing who you are that would be reasonably...
Could you give an example of assumptions that might be made? I can’t think of any off the top of my head that would be relevant in the context of not knowing who you are that would be reasonably helped my an emoji showing skin tone (other than perhaps requirements for sunscreen).
And my point was less about nationality and more the disconnect between ethnicity and skin tone. Being brown is not an ethnicity, but brown is the only emoji you can choose to represent many ethnicities. Conversely you can be anywhere from white skinned to very dark skinned and still be Indian ethnicity.
For these reasons I see changing the emoji color as only really signalling skin tone not ethnicity, and we have problems with people discriminating based on skin tone historically and now.
Sure, I can make an attempt at answering your questions. Just understand that to me this is very personal, so I'm not merely constructing abstracts arguments here. I'm emotionally implicated. The...
Sure, I can make an attempt at answering your questions. Just understand that to me this is very personal, so I'm not merely constructing abstracts arguments here. I'm emotionally implicated.
The most relevant examples would be when I am participating in discussions where I believe to have relevant life experiences that should be in everyone's minds when my words are interpreted. It's one thing to empathize with minorities. It's another to have been actually approached by police multiple times, have been followed by security in several stores, have been called a monkey one time, or watching my own white father trying to explain why white babies are cuter, or seeing my mother -- a successful and respected professional in her own field -- being directed to the "servants elevator".
Or feeling tense everytime I leave the house with my kid because genetics decided that they would have green eyes and skin lighter than Snow White.
You know, the kind of thing that is different to live through than to watch on the news.
There are more subtle occasions when I don't want my identity to be erased just because I'm usually surrounded by Caucasians. That's more of a choice than a need.
I feel that I'm probably sounding too concerned with emojis, in reality I don't really care all that much. Words are way more powerful and universally relevant. But everyone's discussing emojis right now so it felt like a good occasion to chime in. Ultimately, I don't want my blackness to be a casualty of Caucasian defaults. Sometimes emojis are handy tools to prevent that -- a subtle reminder. But I wouldn't wanna exaggerate their importance. Emojis are pretty silly.
Going back to the recent posts about the personality quiz employers are using that has blue people, how would you feel if the default emoji color was blue? I know yellow is supposed to be...
Going back to the recent posts about the personality quiz employers are using that has blue people, how would you feel if the default emoji color was blue? I know yellow is supposed to be ambiguous, but it's pretty obvious it was chosen because it's similar to white and East Asian skin tones. And how would that differ if it was a lighter or darker shade of blue? 👥
In my experience black folks use the black skin toned people/hand emojis, but no one expects a basic smiley to use different colors. So it seems like it matters to the folks seeking inclusion.
In my experience black folks use the black skin toned people/hand emojis, but no one expects a basic smiley to use different colors.
So it seems like it matters to the folks seeking inclusion.
Do you find that holds across demographics? In my experience, Boomer black folks (either gender) either excise emojis or stick to default yellow (or have a different skin tone for each emoji...
Do you find that holds across demographics? In my experience,
Boomer black folks (either gender) either excise emojis or stick to default yellow (or have a different skin tone for each emoji because they changed it once and never changed it back). In other words, identical to boomers of every other skin tone.
Millennial and younger Black women absolutely use the skin tones
The millennial (lowercase-b) black men I’m regular text buddies with are decidedly not representative of the wider (capital-B) Black community
You may interact with a more representative sample than I do.
Then again, perhaps they were introduced as feel-good hoopla but were later adopted with genuine enthusiasm.
In my experience - on a college campus with Gen X-Gen Z, with my millennial online friends, and on Tiktok (Gen Z & millennial mostly) the trend holds with Black folks and other POC. My boomer mom...
In my experience - on a college campus with Gen X-Gen Z, with my millennial online friends, and on Tiktok (Gen Z & millennial mostly) the trend holds with Black folks and other POC.
My boomer mom and her friends use the white skin tones, but I don't know if I can confirm the usage among her Black friends without going looking.
I'll notice people will use the yellow when they switch platforms sometimes, like in teams or something until they find the right one. All my coworkers absolutely changed theirs in Zoom and they're elder Z to younger millennials mostly. (But also some older admin folks as well, Gen X mostly)
I suspect it's mostly boomers not jumping on trends? But my cross sample is a fairly left leaning, more educated population all around those three major domains. So those are some possible biases.
I'm not sure "feel good hoopla" is always quite accurate. Like the pride flags are "feel good hoopla" but I think they're super important to have. The man/woman/androgynous options are really nice too. Representation matters and I see people responding positively to it even when I don't resonate with it. 🏳️🌈👩🏿🤝👩🏼 (Look you can even set the races of your lesbian emoji now)
There has actually been research on this showing that PoC use the emoji with darker skin tones but white people tend to shy away from using the explicitly white emoji and use the yellow ones...
There has actually been research on this showing that PoC use the emoji with darker skin tones but white people tend to shy away from using the explicitly white emoji and use the yellow ones instead for sociological reasons. I'll edit a link if I can find a reference to the study.
Yes, the point of making them yellow was for there to be no one "default" skin tone and to use the modifiers if skin tone was needed. This made including skin tone a very explicit signal of...
Yes, the point of making them yellow was for there to be no one "default" skin tone and to use the modifiers if skin tone was needed. This made including skin tone a very explicit signal of race/ethnicity/etc., since it's optional. It's just that socially, white people are less comfortable explicitly signalling whiteness with their emoji than PoC generally are, so white people tend not to use the light-skinned emoji and instead fall back on the default yellow ones.
Imo it has to do with discomfort in clearly having put effort into explicitly acknowledging one's whiteness (since it usually takes more work to specify a certain skin tone variant) rather than just using the default. Explicitly adding "I'm white!" to your message has a different vibe than explicitly adding "I'm black!" Sociologically an interesting thing that ties into a lot of other ways we interact with the concept of whiteness imo!
I agree with you. I also think that the yellow skin tone of the Simpsons is relevant to how people think about the "neutrality" of yellow. No one thinks twice about the Simpsons being yellow......
I agree with you. I also think that the yellow skin tone of the Simpsons is relevant to how people think about the "neutrality" of yellow. No one thinks twice about the Simpsons being yellow... Until everyone who's not white is drawn with darker skin tones (or if East Asian, paler yellow and different eye shapes mostly.). So yellow isn't a default, it's just white. Or at least light skin tones.
Smileys seme to stay pretty neutral, but once you add people....
👨💼 It doesn't feel like that's a neutral representation. This guy "reads" white IMO. 👨🏻💼👨🏼💼👨🏽💼👨🏾💼👨🏿💼 These guys read like a much more representative range.
👩🏼👨🏼🧑🏼 Similarly while none of these have to be a particular gender its nice as a non-binary person to have something that feels more neutral.
I don't think there's anything offensive about the yellow, it doesn't "trigger" younger people as suggested in the top level comment, but it makes sense why some people want more representative pics. It can be easy when in the dominant culture to assume that something is neutral when it's actually biased to that dominant culture.
oh yeah I agree that the yellow ones ultimately read as white. I think the fact that white people read themselves as the default contributes to this (as well as the fact that it did literally used...
oh yeah I agree that the yellow ones ultimately read as white. I think the fact that white people read themselves as the default contributes to this (as well as the fact that it did literally used to default to light skin). I think that "I am the default option" mindset is part of why white people feel uncomfortable emphasizing their whiteness through using the explicitly white skin tone options, while those who use the darker skin tones have embraced them much more bc they've never had the luxury of feeling like the default in the first place and appreciate being explicitly represented.
And yeah as another nonbinary person I also appreciate having the gender-neutral option. It annoys me when some emoji sets don't treat it that way, but luckily that's gotten better over time.
Fully agree! Also it's been fun realizing the emojis with multiple people in them now let you customize each person, so I've been enjoying playing with them
Fully agree! Also it's been fun realizing the emojis with multiple people in them now let you customize each person, so I've been enjoying playing with them
Anecdotally I find that my interactions with women have more emojis to convey tone as habit and my interactions with men don’t tend to have many emojis if any. In communications with friends and...
Anecdotally I find that my interactions with women have more emojis to convey tone as habit and my interactions with men don’t tend to have many emojis if any.
In communications with friends and family I find them very helpful in properly conveying tone, especially if I’m rushing and don’t want to have to overthink how I’ll be received. In a professional context, I would never use them and in complete honesty would most likely judge someone that did. We actually have one colleague who uses a smiley face as their O in their name and it’s unusual enough that it’s a talking point in the company.
I find that emojis don’t bother me as long as there’s only one a sentence, or less, and they’re not used instead of words. I don’t know why, but that is a pet peeve of mine when people will type like: “my 🐶 loved their 🦴. He was like 😍 and after he 😴.”
I find emojis are pretty common at work. I do work at a tech company, so the ages skew much younger, and we talk mostly on slack. In fact, it'd be more uncommon if someone never uses emojis....
I find emojis are pretty common at work. I do work at a tech company, so the ages skew much younger, and we talk mostly on slack. In fact, it'd be more uncommon if someone never uses emojis. They're even used for some automation via emoji reacts on slack. You'd very commonly see something like
"mind taking a look at this? 🙏"
"what is going on 👀"
and so on. So I do think emojis will become normalized in professional contexts as people age out and the people come in are used to emojis.
I use emoji in my PRs if they require unautomated external changes upon deployment, or are merges to prod. Basically danger warning signs, more apparent than a label. It works great.
I use emoji in my PRs if they require unautomated external changes upon deployment, or are merges to prod. Basically danger warning signs, more apparent than a label. It works great.
Looking at the chart they used to display results, all I'm seeing are emojis that are badly designed so not everyone can understand them without prior knowledge. I don't use them very much and I'd...
Looking at the chart they used to display results, all I'm seeing are emojis that are badly designed so not everyone can understand them without prior knowledge. I don't use them very much and I'd be hard pressed to accurately identify :disgusted:, :angry: or :sad: myself.
Looking at that chart myself, I'm noticing that "accuracy" is a pretty wild thing to measure. If people comprehend and interpret emoji differently based on culture, gender, age, device, context,...
Looking at that chart myself, I'm noticing that "accuracy" is a pretty wild thing to measure. If people comprehend and interpret emoji differently based on culture, gender, age, device, context, etc., what makes one interpretation 'accurate' and another one 'inaccurate'?
Another reason 'accuracy' doesn't make much sense: they're defining accuracy as " The term "accuracy" as used here refers to how often participants' interpretations of the emojis' meanings matched the emotion labels assigned by the study authors." But on the other hand, the emoji the study authors selected to represent "disgusted" is actually "confounded face" on unicode.org. It's not disgusted at all. There are plenty of throw up and nauseated faces that would register more as disgust.
It would be more instructive to see the spectrum of what people identify the emoji to mean.
Given that the use of emojis/smilies is a recurring topic here on tildes alone, this does not surprise me. But it is interesting to see it being studied. Though what I am missing from the article is if they also looked at context and frequency of use.
For example, I am of a generation where you'd use smilies and emojis mostly to accentuate things on the internet and then mostly in chat. I am now at the point where at work I am also used to them, but only when used in measured amounts. Whenever I see a text riddled with them, I am likely to take the entire text a bit less seriously, and I will also start to ignore the emojis in question.
Simply because the underlying assumption is that someone did not put much care and though in the message and is just carelessly putting silly images in them.
Which might not even be the case. Just earlier today @DefinitelyNotAFae made a comment here, showing the opposite. It actually showcases how the use of (to me) a lot of emojis can actually be a sign of someone putting a lot of care into making sure the right tone and emotions are conveyed.
Cross culture communication is already difficult, text based communication can just be downright messy.
Edit:
Big typo fix, "I am not at the point" -> "I am now at the point"
Yeah people using emojis are choosing them like they choose words IME, that could be with a lot of thought or very little but they're still parts of communication.
Do I get annoyed when Facebook's laughing/crying ( 😂 )emoji is slightly tilted back thus implying a greater amount of laughter than I want to send? Yes. Yes I do.
I was thinking about "whenever I see a text riddled with them"... and what this might mean, and glossing over them. It's interesting! I probably did that too.
The thing I noticed reading the post with many emojis is that if you actually take the time to look at each emoji and try to incorporate that tone or meaning into the text, it slows your reading down A LOT. I sometimes found myself rereading the previous sentence with the context of the post-pended "😬" like a detective, trying to figure out what about the previous words would lead to a face like that.
So I agree, when someone uses a lot of emoji, usually there is a lot of thought going into that. But if you or I is reading something quickly, we might just skip them because it is so much faster, and you can usually get the gist without them.
IMO, there's a balance between using emojis to help with tone, vs just words. Too many emojis, and people tune out. But just a few can heighten the experience.
If referring to mine, I probably wouldn't have used that IRL but was doing a bit of an exaggerated version of my actual ways of "sound like a bitch" mitigation. It's mostly a grimace because of the tone struggle, indicating some awkwardness on my part.
Emoji use is a lot like (other) slang use, you get used to how it's used in your communities and then it gets confusing when you branch out to other communities.
Yeah! Totally! I think if it was something like a :) or the smile emoji, it would be like reading a common word, where your brain doesn't have to think that hard to incorporate it into the message. You get used to the ones you see in your communities. Even so, do you experience reading a message that has a lot of them, and it slows you down? Or not at all?
Oh I struggle with messages with a ton of emojis in them sometimes as often they're being used to punctuate every sentence or thought or being used in ways that don't make sense to me. Lots of 🙏🙏🤲🤲🤲 will also tend to throw me off but that may be because I don't dona lot of praying anyway. Those are both ways neither me nor my friends communicate.
And at the same time I might do something like this in the right context.
✍️ Use ✍️ emojis✍️at✍️@semitones✍️
(As I'm making a, usually sarcastic, reminder to myself)
I think it's easier that since I "encoded" the emoji with meaning I can interpret it with no effort, but then I also understand the use of emoji by those I regularly communicate with. An aubergine is just an aubergine until it's a 🍆 in the right context and such.
I believe my first encounter was as “emoticons” or “smilies” as they were known on late-90s, early-00s internet forums (phpBB, vBulletin, InvisionBB, etc). The first time I used them heavily was in chat though, when I encountered AIM by way of iChat (which had smilies that are close relatives to modern Apple emoji) which later became Messages/iMessage.
It’s been interesting to see how their usage has changed over time.
Last time I checked Monzo bank here in the UK was riddled with them. As I'm in my fifties it doesn't seem right that a bank uses them somehow.
What isn't? An emoji as simple as 🙏 can be interpreted as a high five or a prayer gesture.
Or as "thanks" in many of my circles!
That's funny, I use it as a "gratitude" emoji. Like if I ask a coworker something and they say they're looking into it I react with 🙏.
I mean think about all the information in "Ok." "ok" and "ok." or even "Okay"...
Like, it's easy to see that emojis are used differently when words are used differently as well.
It always meant prayer to me.
In my circles as well. I've come to associate it with "thoughts and prayers", eg, "I'm not going to provide any actual help, good luck going it alone".
This is my favorite emoji, because it's so versatile, even if you just interpret it as folded hands (which it is). It can mean "thanks", "please", "sorry", and many other things. Basically just add it to the end of any message and it'll most likely work.
That is "person with hand folded", https://unicodeplus.com/U+1F64F. Usually used to signify prayer or meditation, some folks do use it for a high five. I've seen some systems differentiate the two by giving the high five different cuff colors.
More information: Individual differences in emoji comprehension: Gender, age, and culture, PLoS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0297379
Okay I actually read most of the actual study and I have some thoughts.
Im irked by the use of "accuracy" in this study, when they mean "adherence to Western intent".
They acknowledge this in the discussion
But this is so significant that the whole "why" of this study becomes questionable.
It's like if a reverse team asked English speakers to match "melon eating" emoji to the "correct" emotion.
In WeChat, the study's emoji are even labelled differently :（https://www.emojiall.com/zh-hant/platform-wechat）
The WeChat emoji they chose for "happy" is marked 呲牙 on the app , a tooth-bare grin, from an idiom which originated from poetry describing corpse-eating dogs(chinese language online encyclopedia) -- modern usage doesn't carry quite as negative of a connotation, but it's more like a "s--t eating grin" than mere expression of happy contentment. It should actually correspond with this American emoji 😁
Additionally,
It's well established that not all things are 100% culturally universal, facial expressions being one of them, we shouldn't be surprised western made emojis don't all map.
Similarly the disgust one they chose is 吐, to throw up, this one 🤮. Maybe subtle difference.
Also this study says somewhere that emojis aren't used as much by Chinese people...it's true but I wanted to say that's because they use a lot of "stickers": individualized packs of often animated small graphics that replace regular emojis. Sort of like line and WhatsApp stickers.
I can respect this motivation, much like how even the most "obviously accepted" things re worth studying to put numbers and data to an idea. I just think this study isn't very well designed.
I dislike that it has become common to pluralize emoji. They were created by NTT DOCOMO, and the name is literal Japanese—e (picture) + moji (character)—a language that doesn't use plurals. It just seems equally weird sounding as pluralizing kanji, sushi or double-pluralizing spaghetti. (Similarly, I'm seeing more and more people pluralize software, which is a non-countable noun, such as music. You wouldn't say "I listened to three musics today.")
Natural language is natural, and natural languages evolve organically. If natively English speaking people pluralize emojis, it's a pluralizable noun.
And yet some English speakers pluralize math into maths 🤮.
The rules are only slightly logical.
Thems fightin' words in some circles, methinks.
The Japanese word emoji doesn't get pluralized but the English one can be pluralized or not! Just like you might say "three musics" in when the English words are pulled into another language.
If you're seeing native English speakers pluralize it, it's not being used as a non-count noun by those speakers anymore. Language changes, and that's that -- even within the linguistics department at my university there was a divide in older people using "data are" vs younger people using "data is". And neither of us was wrong -- it's just a language change in progress!
It's also just not that rare for plural forms of words to be borrowed into English as singular words that then get English pluralization added back on. Panini comes to mind. How emoji is pluralized still seems to vary a lot atm anyway (I use both "emoji" and "emojis" as the plural form, swapping between them inconsistently).
As a fan of using emoji for ages, I have never known the etymology. I'm sure most don't and just apply the standard English pluralization rule to it.
Such is the ever-evolving nature of language! But I get the dislike. When there is a literal "right" way, its annoying that people insist on using an incorrect variant. My personal dislike is when people describe being left "on read" instead of left "unread" in texts and messages.
(Or maybe they're literally describing that the other person has read the message, and left a read receipt but not replied? Hence, left "on read"? Actually now I'm not sure. Do you know?)
I would like to note that people have been pluralizing software for a long time -- in hacker subculture. First as wares and then later of as warez.
Your parenthetical is what "on read" means, yes.
Yeah as @wervenyt said, it's that they're not replying to you after a message you feel they should have replied to. (Often when one or both of you are upset with the other.)
Cool! Learned something new today. :) The confusion is that when I do this to other people, I make sure not to open the notification, so that in their text app, or whatever, the message appears unread, so, "left unread". It's plausible deniability.
But it looks like these other people are less careful, they read the message in the app, so it gets marked as read, and "left on read"
It just so happens both of these are homonyms in english... unread/on read. So I thought other people were also doing the unread trick I do, which I thought was common.
I absolutely understand the confusion, if I didn't work with Gen Z I probably would also be confused. Others are doing your trick too. But also, being left on read is perceived as a deliberate slight. So it's not just that they're less careful, though it could be, but it can be an intentional snub.
I find this so interesting and why and how we adapt words that originate from other languages.
I’ve recently been learning about and researching etymology. One of the biggest things I’ve learnt is about how language is a constantly changing and evolving thing and that’s not a bad thing. Cultural dialects and new words and the changing meaning of words is just a part of our cultures and a natural process. I find it fascinating.
There’s this silly quote from the film infinity war where one character says the name of a place the other character has never heard of before. D: “That’s a made up word”. T:”All words are made up words”. And it rings very true because all language and grammar rules and spelling rules are just things humanity has made up along the way to make it easier to communicate
Forced to accept one or the other, emoji-たち or emoji-ズ?
Neither are really acceptable in standard Japanese. ~たち is exclusively used for people (eg. 私たち), and ~ズ isn't really standard parlance. You might see it in loan words, but as Japanese doesn't normally distinguish between plurals except via context, it wouldn't be considered accepted for anything else. You would still say えもじ in Japanese for the plural, without the ズ suffix.
Very good to know, thank you
Any chance this was based on my comment in another thread this morning where I admitted to my gender-based emoji bias (and acknowledged I need to overcome it)?
After reading that, my new tab page had this as the top recommended link!
I would consider that pretty doubtful. It would be odd to start with giving me an article relevant to a single comment in a large discussion, at the very least.
The unicode faq for emoji answers some of the questions in this thread, saying that using the plural "emojis" is acceptable (yay linguistic descriptivism!) and that "The meaning of each emoji can vary depending on language, culture, or context, and may change or be repurposed over time." also stuff about flags, which is very interesting (geopolitics!)
I can strongly recommend anyone that has even a passing interest in how modern technology has affected (written) language read the book Because Internet.
I sometimes wonder if me using yellow emoji triggers the younger, race conscious people or whether the decision to create all skin shades of emoji is performative tech industry hoopla, and nobody actually cares.
I use black emoji because I'm black and its nice to convey ethnicity even when not relevant to a conversation. Specially in predominantly white environment where everyone will default to picture me as white.
If everyone used black emoji suddenly my use of black emoji would lose meaning. That wouldn't offend me, but it would remove the utility of something that conveys my ethnicity in an amusing way.
In the case of yellow emojis, given that they're defaults, I don't think anyone would ascribe meaning to that.
Out of interest why do you think it’s nice to convey ethnicity? I’m open to other points of view but I worry about the negatives about identity politics. I find people bind together on ethnic lines, and in unrelated conversations this can lead to group think, and subconscious racism (in all directions). But then again, I might miss a positive aspect.
Also I would argue that it’s conveys skin tone, not ethnicity. There is no way to distinguish between Indians, Mexicans, south East Asian, or mixed race. So the signal is different in an important way.
There are situations when it's nice to convey ethnicity because otherwise people have a tendency to attribute the default ethnicity, and that leads to a bunch of other assumptions that someone who's in the default group is unlikely to perceive. The fact that it's not really possible to determine country of origin does not negate the expressiveness of color as an indication of ethnicity, as ethnicity is not the same as nationality. But it would be nice to have a tiny flag next to usernames like you'll see in some multinational subreddits. Or a preferred pronouns indicators as they have on Beehaw.
Could you give an example of assumptions that might be made? I can’t think of any off the top of my head that would be relevant in the context of not knowing who you are that would be reasonably helped my an emoji showing skin tone (other than perhaps requirements for sunscreen).
And my point was less about nationality and more the disconnect between ethnicity and skin tone. Being brown is not an ethnicity, but brown is the only emoji you can choose to represent many ethnicities. Conversely you can be anywhere from white skinned to very dark skinned and still be Indian ethnicity.
For these reasons I see changing the emoji color as only really signalling skin tone not ethnicity, and we have problems with people discriminating based on skin tone historically and now.
Sure, I can make an attempt at answering your questions. Just understand that to me this is very personal, so I'm not merely constructing abstracts arguments here. I'm emotionally implicated.
The most relevant examples would be when I am participating in discussions where I believe to have relevant life experiences that should be in everyone's minds when my words are interpreted. It's one thing to empathize with minorities. It's another to have been actually approached by police multiple times, have been followed by security in several stores, have been called a monkey one time, or watching my own white father trying to explain why white babies are cuter, or seeing my mother -- a successful and respected professional in her own field -- being directed to the "servants elevator".
Or feeling tense everytime I leave the house with my kid because genetics decided that they would have green eyes and skin lighter than Snow White.
You know, the kind of thing that is different to live through than to watch on the news.
There are more subtle occasions when I don't want my identity to be erased just because I'm usually surrounded by Caucasians. That's more of a choice than a need.
I feel that I'm probably sounding too concerned with emojis, in reality I don't really care all that much. Words are way more powerful and universally relevant. But everyone's discussing emojis right now so it felt like a good occasion to chime in. Ultimately, I don't want my blackness to be a casualty of Caucasian defaults. Sometimes emojis are handy tools to prevent that -- a subtle reminder. But I wouldn't wanna exaggerate their importance. Emojis are pretty silly.
Thank you for sharing, that gives a lot of useful context and nuance.
Going back to the recent posts about the personality quiz employers are using that has blue people, how would you feel if the default emoji color was blue? I know yellow is supposed to be ambiguous, but it's pretty obvious it was chosen because it's similar to white and East Asian skin tones. And how would that differ if it was a lighter or darker shade of blue? 👥
In my experience black folks use the black skin toned people/hand emojis, but no one expects a basic smiley to use different colors.
So it seems like it matters to the folks seeking inclusion.
Do you find that holds across demographics? In my experience,
You may interact with a more representative sample than I do.
Then again, perhaps they were introduced as feel-good hoopla but were later adopted with genuine enthusiasm.
Who are "(lowercase-b) black men?"
African immigrants, mostly.
So black skin but not Black American cultural background?
Exactly.
In my experience - on a college campus with Gen X-Gen Z, with my millennial online friends, and on Tiktok (Gen Z & millennial mostly) the trend holds with Black folks and other POC.
My boomer mom and her friends use the white skin tones, but I don't know if I can confirm the usage among her Black friends without going looking.
I'll notice people will use the yellow when they switch platforms sometimes, like in teams or something until they find the right one. All my coworkers absolutely changed theirs in Zoom and they're elder Z to younger millennials mostly. (But also some older admin folks as well, Gen X mostly)
I suspect it's mostly boomers not jumping on trends? But my cross sample is a fairly left leaning, more educated population all around those three major domains. So those are some possible biases.
I'm not sure "feel good hoopla" is always quite accurate. Like the pride flags are "feel good hoopla" but I think they're super important to have. The man/woman/androgynous options are really nice too. Representation matters and I see people responding positively to it even when I don't resonate with it. 🏳️🌈👩🏿🤝👩🏼 (Look you can even set the races of your lesbian emoji now)
There has actually been research on this showing that PoC use the emoji with darker skin tones but white people tend to shy away from using the explicitly white emoji and use the yellow ones instead for sociological reasons. I'll edit a link if I can find a reference to the study.
Yes, the point of making them yellow was for there to be no one "default" skin tone and to use the modifiers if skin tone was needed. This made including skin tone a very explicit signal of race/ethnicity/etc., since it's optional. It's just that socially, white people are less comfortable explicitly signalling whiteness with their emoji than PoC generally are, so white people tend not to use the light-skinned emoji and instead fall back on the default yellow ones.
Imo it has to do with discomfort in clearly having put effort into explicitly acknowledging one's whiteness (since it usually takes more work to specify a certain skin tone variant) rather than just using the default. Explicitly adding "I'm white!" to your message has a different vibe than explicitly adding "I'm black!" Sociologically an interesting thing that ties into a lot of other ways we interact with the concept of whiteness imo!
I agree with you. I also think that the yellow skin tone of the Simpsons is relevant to how people think about the "neutrality" of yellow. No one thinks twice about the Simpsons being yellow... Until everyone who's not white is drawn with darker skin tones (or if East Asian, paler yellow and different eye shapes mostly.). So yellow isn't a default, it's just white. Or at least light skin tones.
Smileys seme to stay pretty neutral, but once you add people....
👨💼 It doesn't feel like that's a neutral representation. This guy "reads" white IMO. 👨🏻💼👨🏼💼👨🏽💼👨🏾💼👨🏿💼 These guys read like a much more representative range.
👩🏼👨🏼🧑🏼 Similarly while none of these have to be a particular gender its nice as a non-binary person to have something that feels more neutral.
I don't think there's anything offensive about the yellow, it doesn't "trigger" younger people as suggested in the top level comment, but it makes sense why some people want more representative pics. It can be easy when in the dominant culture to assume that something is neutral when it's actually biased to that dominant culture.
oh yeah I agree that the yellow ones ultimately read as white. I think the fact that white people read themselves as the default contributes to this (as well as the fact that it did literally used to default to light skin). I think that "I am the default option" mindset is part of why white people feel uncomfortable emphasizing their whiteness through using the explicitly white skin tone options, while those who use the darker skin tones have embraced them much more bc they've never had the luxury of feeling like the default in the first place and appreciate being explicitly represented.
And yeah as another nonbinary person I also appreciate having the gender-neutral option. It annoys me when some emoji sets don't treat it that way, but luckily that's gotten better over time.
Fully agree! Also it's been fun realizing the emojis with multiple people in them now let you customize each person, so I've been enjoying playing with them
Anecdotally I find that my interactions with women have more emojis to convey tone as habit and my interactions with men don’t tend to have many emojis if any.
In communications with friends and family I find them very helpful in properly conveying tone, especially if I’m rushing and don’t want to have to overthink how I’ll be received. In a professional context, I would never use them and in complete honesty would most likely judge someone that did. We actually have one colleague who uses a smiley face as their O in their name and it’s unusual enough that it’s a talking point in the company.
I find that emojis don’t bother me as long as there’s only one a sentence, or less, and they’re not used instead of words. I don’t know why, but that is a pet peeve of mine when people will type like: “my 🐶 loved their 🦴. He was like 😍 and after he 😴.”
I find emojis are pretty common at work. I do work at a tech company, so the ages skew much younger, and we talk mostly on slack. In fact, it'd be more uncommon if someone never uses emojis. They're even used for some automation via emoji reacts on slack. You'd very commonly see something like
"mind taking a look at this? 🙏"
"what is going on 👀"
and so on. So I do think emojis will become normalized in professional contexts as people age out and the people come in are used to emojis.
I use emoji in my PRs if they require unautomated external changes upon deployment, or are merges to prod. Basically danger warning signs, more apparent than a label. It works great.
Looking at the chart they used to display results, all I'm seeing are emojis that are badly designed so not everyone can understand them without prior knowledge. I don't use them very much and I'd be hard pressed to accurately identify :disgusted:, :angry: or :sad: myself.
Looking at that chart myself, I'm noticing that "accuracy" is a pretty wild thing to measure. If people comprehend and interpret emoji differently based on culture, gender, age, device, context, etc., what makes one interpretation 'accurate' and another one 'inaccurate'?
Another reason 'accuracy' doesn't make much sense: they're defining accuracy as " The term "accuracy" as used here refers to how often participants' interpretations of the emojis' meanings matched the emotion labels assigned by the study authors." But on the other hand, the emoji the study authors selected to represent "disgusted" is actually "confounded face" on unicode.org. It's not disgusted at all. There are plenty of throw up and nauseated faces that would register more as disgust.
It would be more instructive to see the spectrum of what people identify the emoji to mean.