SIDI M0HAMED BEN ABDELLAH UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT Of ENGLISH STUDIES

FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMAN SCIENCES, LINGUISTICS & CULTURAL STREAM

DAHR LMEHRAZ- FEZ

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE USAGE OF

EMOJIS
UNIVESITY SIDI MOHAMED BEN ABDELLAH
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AS A CASE OF STUDY

A Monograph submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of

the BA Degree in English Studies

Submitted by: Supervised by:

Academic year: 2020/2021

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 ©2021

ALEM OMAR

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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 ABSTRACT

Gender variation in the use of emojis has become a very common issue in

everyday communication. When we use emojis frequently, we generally make differences

from each other. These differences do not only exist in the way emojis are produced by

the users, but also appeared in how emojis are used and produced differently between

males and females. This paper examines the different ways and reasons behind using

emojis, and the frequency of responding with some specific emojis to some specific

situations among the students of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University English

department. The online form of Questionnaire was shared in many groups of English

department in order to conduct the survey. It was found that the students differ in the

ways and reasons behind using emojis, and the frequency of responding with emojis.

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 DEDICATION

I dedicate this work to my parents who raised me up till this moment and for all

these years. I would like to dedicate this work also to my sister and friends who believed

in me and make me believe in myself; especially to my sister who was supporting me and

encouraging me she was by my side all this time; and to Chaymae, who really helped me,

and gave me a hope to finish my work when I lost it; and also to my Homies who

helped me from the beginning till the end of this work.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would love to express my special thanks to my supervisor professor MAHA EL

BIADI for permitting me to work on this topic. I would like also to thank the English

department’s professors for all the effort that they made for teaching us.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………….….….. iv

List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………..….. viii

List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………… ix

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..… 1-2

Chapter 1- Literature review………………………………………………………………. 3

1.1. What are Emojis? …………………………………………………………...……….... 3

➢ 1.1.1. Historical overview………………………………………………………….. 3-7

➢ 1.1.2. Defining Emojis…………………………………………………………..… 7-10

➢ 1.1.3. The different types of Emojis………………………………………….…..10-12

1.2. The function of Emojis……………………………………………………………….12-15

1.3. Emojis and Gender…………………………………………………………………...15-18

1.4. Language and Gender…………………………………………………………..…..… 19

1.4.1. The different linguistic features used by male and female speakers…………… 19

❖ Vocabulary…………………………………………………………….…..….. 19-20
❖ Hedges…………………………………………………………………..….….. 21-22
❖ Tag questions…………………………………………………………….….… 22-25
❖ Intensifiers……………………………………………………………….….… 25-27
1.4.2. Theories of Language and Gender……………………………….…...…….... 27-28

❖ Deficit Approach………………………………………………………………. 28

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 ❖ Dominance Approach…………………………………………………………..29-30
❖ Difference Approach……………………………………………………………30-32
❖ Discursive Approach……………………………………………………......…..33-34

Chapter 2- Research Methodology……………………………………………….…….….. 35

2.1. Introduction ……………………………………………………..………………... 35

2.2. Research design ……………………………………………………………......…. 35

2.3. Research objective…………………………………………………………..…..… 35

2.4. Research Questions……………………………………………………..……... 35-36

2.5. Significance of the study…………………………………………………..……… 36

2.6. Sample……………………………………………………………………..………. 36

2.7. Instruments………………………………………………...……………………… 37

2.8. Survey Questionnaires………………………………………………...………….. 37

2.9. Methods of Data Analysis…………………………………………………...……. 37

2.10. Procedure…………………………………………………………...……………. 38

2.11. Limitations……………………………………………………………………..… 38

Chapter 3 - RESULTS AND DISCUSSION…………………………………………..…... 39

3.1. Reasons for using emojis..……………………………………………………… 39-42

3.2. Emojis in context (Interpretation and understanding) ……………………… 42-44

3.3. The frequency of using some emojis such as ‘ ’‘ ’‘ ’ in specific

situations…………………………………………………………………………...…….. 44-51

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Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………… 52

Appendix………………………………………………………………………………….. 53-57

Bibliography. ……………………………………………………………………………. 58-63

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 LIST OF TABLES

Tableau 1 : The frequency and types of tag questions that are produced by both genders. ...... 25
Tableau 2 : The characteristics of men and women language. .................................................... 32
Tableau 3 : What people use instead of the “face with tears of joy ‘ ’ emoji.:........................ 46

Tableau 4 : What people use instead of the heart ‘ ’ emoji. .................................................... 48

Tableau 5 : What people use instead of the ‘ ’ emoji. ............................................................ 50

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 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 : The original emoticons from puck (1881) made up of punctuation marks and other
typographical characters. ............................................................................................................................. 3
Figure 2 : DOCOMO’s Original Emoji Set, created by Shigetaka Kurita ........................................................ 5
Figure 3 : Andy Murray’s wedding announcement. ..................................................................................... 7
Figure 4 : Details of a wall chart at the exhibition that pairs a column of hieroglyphs with a column of
emojis.Credit...Studio Ira Ginzburg. .............................................................................................................. 8
Figure 5 : The 20 most frequently used emojis in October 2019. The Unicode Consortium ..................... 11
Figure 6 : The reasons for using emojis ...................................................................................................... 39
Figure 7 : The ways in which people use emojis. ........................................................................................ 40
Figure 8 : The frequency of sent messages that include emojis. ................................................................ 41
Figure 9 : The frequency of received messages that include emojis. ......................................................... 42
Figure 10 : How people interpret messages that include emojis. .............................................................. 43
Figure 11 : The frequency of using ‘ ’ to respond to funny situations. .................................................. 44
Figure 12 : The Frequency of using ‘ ’ to respond to romantic situations.............................................. 47
Figure 13 : The Frequency of using ‘ ’ to respond tosad situations ....................................................... 49

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 Introduction

The major characteristic that distinguishes human beings from animals is our way

to communicate with each other by using language. We have words for specific things,

emotions, and expressions. Communication today is just as important as it was 200 or

2000 years ago. The difference is how we do it. Today we have access to so many

different channels through which we can express happiness, disappointment, opinions,

news, status, thoughts, etc....

Not only is it possible to use different media for this communication, such as blogs,

mail, Internet, and phones, but it is also a simple and quick way to communicate,

especially in long distance communications. We type, we press ‘send’ and instantly, the

message pops up on someone else’s screen. Responses to those messages often need

to be instantaneous and in short time, there is really not enough time to be sure that the

message is understood or that the response has been thought through. To make it easier,

we can also show our mood, our emotions or our attitude, such as sarcasm or anger,

through emojis.

The first chapter of this thesis is dedicated to a detailed review of the literature that

has already been produced on the subject. After explaining The different linguistic

features used by both genders and the theories of language and gender, the historical

overview of emojis, their definition and their different types are explained. Then, an initial

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typology of the linguistic functions of emoji is presented, inspired by several previous

frameworks and by personal observations. The state-of-the-art ends with an examination

of the different works produced by researchers on emoji variation according to gender.

The second chapter starts by detailing the research questions that the thesis aims to

answer. Then, the corpus used for the research project is described in-depth, from the

collection of the data to its methods of analysis. Finally, the results of the investigation

are presented in the third chapter. Various tables and statistics are used to visualize these

results, which are supported by many examples from the corpus. Besides, this chapter is

also discussing in great details the findings of the analysis.

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Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1. What are Emojis?

1.1.1. Historical overview

According to the website ‘Collecteurs.com’, and back in 1881, 100 years before the

birth of emojis, emoji’s ancient forebear, emoticons, were first published in the American

humor magazine, Puck. They were first made up of punctuation marks and other

typographical characters conveying joy, melancholy, indifference and astonishment,

emoticons were then categorized as ‘typographical art’. After many decades and until the

1990s emoticons were added to chat rooms across the world as an integral part of

internet-speak.

Figure 1 : The original emoticons from puck (1881) made up of punctuation marks and other typographical characters.

On 19 September 1982, computer scientist Scott Fahlman noticed that the computer

messaging system through which professors of Carnegie Mellon University

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communicated lacked something important: a way to signal if a message was intended

as a joke or not. Fahlman proposed two strings of three characters that would join every

message in need of disambiguation. The string “:-)” indicated that the message was a

joke or contained irony, and “:-(” that the message was to be interpreted as serious

(Dresner & Herring, 2010).

The website ‘Collecteurs.com’ adds more, that there is a debate about when the

modern-day emoji was born. Some say it was ´SoftBank` in 1997, however the Japanese

designer, Shigetaka Kurita created the most celebrated emoji set, for Japan’s main mobile

carrier, DOCOMO. Kurita created 176-character emoji set in 1999 for DOCOMO’s mobile

plateform “I-mode”. His intention was to design a simple set of characters for users to

convey information in a concise way. The broad range of emoji finally gave people a way

to insert emotion into their digital conversations and gave birth to an entirely new visual

language, becoming a hallmark of the way people communicate.

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 Figure 2 : DOCOMO’s Original Emoji Set, created by Shigetaka Kurita

As people across the globe began using emojis more frequently within instant

messages, a problem was discovered. According to a report by Unicode Consortium

(2019), the problem was that mobile phones were developed differently from one another,

which resulted in each mobile phone having a unique set of coding. Thus, the coding

regarding text for each mobile phone was not compatible with any mobile phone other

than those with the same code and development.

Furthermore, this incompatibility resulted in emojis not being displayed at all or as they

were intended for the recipient. Because of these difficulties, a non-profit organization

called the Unicode Consortium was asked to include emojis in their already existing

database for symbols (Unicode Consortium, 2019).

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 The Unicode Consortium made it possible for people with different technological

platforms such as “smartphones, laptops, tablets and cloud computers to share or

exchange text that is written in any language or with symbols” (Unicode Consortium,

2017).

The Unicode Consortium aids and facilitates the exchange of emojis, symbols and

characters between people with different languages and different platforms, through the

Unicode Standard. This system allows for each character or symbol to have “a unique

number for every character, no matter what platform, device, application or language. It

has been adopted by all modern software providers and now allows data to be transported

through many different platforms, devices and applications without corruption” (Unicode

Consortium, 2017).

According to the website ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’, the tennis player, Andy

Murray, has contributed in the raise of emojis, the tennis star has taken to Twitter to give

his followers a run-down of his wedding day itinerary, and he’s done it entirely in emojis.

Murray is clearly a proficient emoji user, as his wedding day tweet described pre-wedding

preparations, the weather, the kiss, the beverages that would be consumed (and the

quantity) and much more. All in 51 emojis. His tweet went viral at that time the post had

thousands of retweets and likes, which influence other users to use emojis more than

they used to be.

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 Figure 3 : Andy Murray’s wedding announcement.

1.1.2. Defining Emojis

Oxford dictionaries elected the ‘face with tears of joy ( )’as their word of the year,

arguing their selection by Steinmetz saying “emoji have come to embody a core aspect

of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively

immediate” (Steinmetz, 2015).

The popularity of emojis seems to reflect the attraction of our modern digital society

for visual hints. Emojis are not the first graphical representations to appear in text, in this

sense smiley faces were found in written postcards long before the invention of of

emoticons, and according to McCulloch, Lewis Carrol used to send ‘rebus letter’ filled with

drawings used to replace some words in his sentences (McCulloch, 2019).

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 Linguists such as Brisson, 2015, and Alshenqeeti (2016), discuss the interesting

similarity between emojis and pictographic systems of communication, like ancient

Egyptien hieroglyphs.

Figure 4 : Details of a wall chart at the exhibition that pairs a column of hieroglyphs with a column of emojis.Credit...Studio Ira
Ginzburg.

Oxford Dictionaries’ decision to elect the ‘face with tears of joy ( )’as their word of the

year raises an important question: can emojis really be considered as words?

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 However, the three most known dictionaries; Oxford, Cambridge and Merriam-

Webster, in their definition of emoji they don’t consider it as a word.

(1) Emoji : “A digital image that is added to a message in electronic communication in order to express a

particular idea or feeling.” (Cambridge Dictionary)

(2) Emoji : “A small digital image or icon used to express an idea, emotion, etc.” (Oxford Dictionaries)

(3) Emoji : “Any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in text fields in electronic communication (as in

text messages, e-mail, and social media) to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey information

succinctly, communicate a message playfully without using words, etc.” (Merriam-Webster)

Instead, they are jointly described as “small digital images or icons used in Computer

mediated communication to express an idea or emotion”. Although, emojis refer to items

and concepts just as words do, the relationship with their referents is iconic, not arbitrary.

Due to this characteristic, it is very difficult and sometimes impossible predict the meaning

of a sentence build up only by emojis, or to build a meaningful sentence depending only

on emojis. That is shown in the attempt of Fred Benenson to translate Herman Melville’s

Moby Dick entirely into emojis (Benenson, 2010; Radford et al., 2016).

Hamza Alshenqeeti (2016) considers emoji as a form of paralanguage that only

functions when it is associated with a more efficient code (e.g., the English language).

Emojis thus seem to work a lot better as a supplement to language than as a language

itself.

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 To sum up, there is not one definition set to definit emojis, but all Dictionaries agreed

about defining them as a small digital images or icons used in Computer mediated

communication to express an idea or emotion.

1.1.3. The different types of Emojis

Most digital keyboards on smartphones and apps divide these emojis into eight

different lists making them easier to find for their users (Pohl et al., 2016). According to

Emojipedia, a website created in 2016 by Jeremy Burge and considered as a reference

on emoji by many scholars (Barbieri et al., 2016 ; Miller et al., 2016, McCulloch, 2019),

divides its articles on the basis of the same eight emoji categories: “Smileys & People”,

“Animals & Nature”, “Food & Drink”, “Activity”, “Travel & Places”, “Objects”, “Symbols”

and “Flags”. Some devices and platforms also include a list gathering their user’s most

commonly used emoji, as well as a list of their most recently used emoji.

In October 2019, the Unicode Consortium published a table containing all the different

types of emoji ranked from the most used to the least frequent, across multiple platforms.

They claimed that frequency was “one of many considerations taken into account when

deciding on which emoji to add in the next Unicode update” (Unicode, 2019). These

statistics revealed that the “face with tears of joy” emoji (“ ”) (the aforementioned “word

of the year 2015”) is still, four years later, the most used emoji. The top five list contained

the “red heart” emoji (“ ”), the “smiling face with heart-eyes emoji” (“ ”), the “rolling on

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the floor laughing” emoji (“ ”) and the “smiling face with smiling eyes emoji” (“ ”). The

whole “top 20” is presented in Table below.

Figure 5 : The 20 most frequently used emojis in October 2019. The Unicode Consortium

According to the (Unicode, 2019), and from eight categories it seems clear that the

“Smileys & People” emoji are the most popular. Inside this first category, three subclasses

can be distinguished: “facial emoji”, “people emoji” and “gesture emoji”. Facial emoji (e.g.

“ ” or “ ”) are the most common of all, and also the most stereotypical. According to

the Unicode Consortium’ statistics, ten of the twenty most used emoji are facial emoji

(Unicode, 2019). From these ten-facial emoji, only two express negative emotions (“ ”

and “ ”). This correlates with Lin and Qiu’s (2013) study, which showed that

COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE (CMD) users are a lot more likely to display

positive than negative emotions, especially on public social networking sites.

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 Generally all researchers and speciallized websites, categorize emojis into eight main

categories that are : “Smileys & People”, “Animals & Nature”, “Food & Drink”, “Activity”,

“Travel & Places”, “Objects”, “Symbols” and “Flags”.

1.2. The function of Emojis

The only reasons why people use emoji in COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE

(CMD) are to transcribe physical emotions and to represent items and concepts iconically

that what it maybe seemed at the first sight, but it has been demonstrated by many

linguists that the role of emojis are much more complex, emojis appear to perform a

variety of linguistic functions that users unconsciously or consciously apply and

understand. This section presents an overview of the different emoji functions that ere

identified by previous studies.

Generally, there are two main functions of emojis that are :

• The expressive function of Emoji.

• The interpretative function of Emoji.

❖ The expressive function of Emoji :

Dresner & Herring (2010), noted that One of the most natural functions of emojis and

emoticons before them is the hope to bring COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE

(CMD) more closer to oral communication by mimicking paraverbal cues, such as facial

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expressions and gestures. Expressive emojis allow users to express their emotions in a

converstion or to add emotional value to verbal content. More specifically (Schneebeli,

2017) gave some examples such as anger can be expressed with an “angry face” emoji

or support with a “raised fist” emoji, happiness with a “smiling face” emoji.

Emotions can be expressed with the use of emoji mainly in two different ways.

According to Marcoccia & Gauducheau (2007), expressive emojis are able to reveal the

emotional state of the speaker when sending a message. Dresner & Herring (2010) and

Na’aman (2017) noted that expressive emojis work as indicators of affective states (e.g.,

I’m going to be in the pool this day ).

Cramer (2016) said that emojis can also express the emotional value of a message

when no emotion is present in the verbal part of the text. Emojis in this case play the role

of indicators of stance, howing how speakers stand in conversations, also they can be

used to react to previous messages in a conversation or to a situation (Schneebeli, 2017).

Example:

A : What did you think of the main character’s death?

B:

Moreover, Herring and Dainas (2017) found out that in Facebook comments threads,

emojis are often used on their own (they are used without verbal content), in this situation

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emojis are used as a react to previous comments and messages in the thread. Pappert

and Beißwenger (2019) call this use the “evaluative or commentary function” of emoji.

❖ The interpretative function of Emoji :

Non-verbal expressions such as facial expressions and laughter, in face-to-face

conversations are not only tools for expressing emotions, but also for altering the meaning

of a message. In CMD this feature is replaced by interpretative emojis, this kind of emojis

work as indications to how a sent message should be understood by the receiver (Herring

& Dainas, 2017).

Researchers such as Cramer (2016), state that interpretative emoji act as ‘tone’

modifiers, in the opposite of the expressive emojis which affect the ‘mood’ of the message.

Amaghlobeli (2012), said that this type of emojis works as a guidance to interpretate the

message, by this they can help clarify the intention of the speaker and eliminate the

misunderstanding between the two parts of the conversation.

Examples:

C : We are having lunch at our grandmother house again .

D : We are having lunch at our grandmother house again .

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 Spina (2018) refers to this kind of emojis as pragmatic markers, because they help

users to ‘infer contextually appropriate meanings in text’, similarly like ‘contextualization

cues’ in oral communication.

The interpretive function of emojis is often used in the context of irony and sarcasm.

González-Ibáñez (2011) and Weissman & Tanner (2018) research revealed that emojis

are the most efficient way to buil and decode sarcastic messages. Schneebeli (2017)

Apply the appraoch which was introduced first for emoticons by Dresner and Herring

(2010) on emojis, depending on the speech act theory developed by Searle (1969) and

Austin (1962), Dresner and Herring looked into emojis as ‘illocutionary force markers’, as

indicators of the intended action of a messag, they also help to convey the speech act

performed the production of utterance. Schneebeli said ; depending on this approach,

emojis can be considered as a way to make the implied more obvious (e.g., i want to kill

you soo bad ).

Functional analysis of emoji is a new field of research where much has yet to be

discovered, Emojis’ function that was presented in this section aims to help uncovering

the different ways in which emojis are used in computer-mediated discourse (CMD).

1.3. Emojis and gender

Many studies have investigated the effect of gender on emojis production. Alecia Wolf

(2000) discovered that women tend to use emojis more than men, other research projects

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on emojis variation confirmed what Wolf said about the frequency of emoji usage between

both genders, these research projects were conducted by (Tossell et al., 2012; Nishimura,

2015).

Wolf also noticed that female users are more likely to use emojis with their expressive

function (expressing emotions), in contrast to men who use emojis with their interpretative

function. However, Wolf admits that these findings seem to support the stereotypical

image of the pragmatic man and the passionate woman, it appears that her results are

strongly dependent on the context of production. Wolf (2000) adds that in group

discussions in which there are less women than men, females tend to use fewer emojis,

while men use emojis more in contexts where females are dominant, and in mixed groups

both genders tend to produce emojis with almost the same amount.

Another study was conducted by Escouflaire (2018) on 1200 french private text

messages in Belgium, revealed that a bit more emojis are produced by women than by

men. Some emojis appear more frequently used by men (e.g., ), others more by

women (e.g., ).

Moreover, a study was conducted in 2017 by Chen et al., (2017) on the impact of

gender on emojis production. The results, based on 400 million private messages, point

out that emojis are used more frequently by women than by men. It also appears that the

most commonly used types of emojis are not the same for both genders. Specifically, the

most popular emojis seem to be produced by both male and females, but some particular

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emojis are more popular among a specific gender. E.g., the ‘party popper’ ( ) emoji is

more likely to be used by women, and the ‘cigarette’ ( ) emoji is more frequent with

men.

This study's interesting finding is that facial emojis (smileys & people) are more popular

among females, while males tend to use emojis that represent hearts. The study

conductors suggest that the difference in producing emojis between males and females

is due to the fact that men are less likely to express love in real life, thus they use

COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE (CMD) and produce emojis to express their

feelings more than women do.

The influence of gender on emojis has been studied not only in relation to emoji

production, but also in relation to emojis interpretation. For a study on the linguistic

representations conveyed by emojis, Escouflaire (2018) in this study asked 576

participants to tell whether particular examples of text messages containingsome emojis,

a lot of emojis or no emojis at all, were written by men or women. According to the findings,

the presence of emojis in anonymous messages is considered by many as an indicator

that the message writer is a female.

As well as the more emojis a message contains, the more people think that it was

produced by a woman. Another study controlled by Baron & ling (2011) where they

interviewed American adolescents on how different they thought boys and girls wrote text

messages. It appeared that women were considered as the main producers of ‘smiley

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faces’, whereas boys were considered less expressive when texting with their female

peers.

If both genders differ in using and producing emojis, do they also differ in understanding

them ?

This question is answered by a survey conducted by Herring & Dainas (2018) on 628

participants found that there is no significant difference in interpretating emojis between

males and females. The only divergence occured on specific emojis functions. For

instance, the expressive function is more frequently associated with emojis that represent

hearts are used by men, whereas, females are more likely to link the same function to the

‘face with heart eyes’ emoji. An interesting finding of this study is that the people who did

not identify themselves as either male or female showed very different interpretations of

many emojis.

However, some researchers such as An et al. (2018), observed in another 29 study,

based on Chinese text messages, that gender did not appear to have any impact on emoji

production, the influence of gender on emoji usage and production might thus be

dependent on other factors, such as the user’s culture or Language.

To conclude, the frequency of usage and production of emojis is more related to

female users.

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 1.4. Language and Gender

Gender differences in language use has always been a debated issue for centuries,

and people have tried in vain to identify these differences. However, this issue doesn’t

seem to have a compromising solution since there are many differences in language use

existing between women and men. More importantly, we are more concerned in this

paper with the linguistic and communicative differences of both females and males.

1.4.1. The different linguistic features used by male and female

speakers

❖ Vocabulary:

Vocabulary is one of the most used components in language. So, gender difference in

language use can be seen in the divergence of vocabulary. According to Wenjing (2012)

There is no rule for females in English pronunciation rules, syntax, and vocabulary

structure, but the gender difference in vocabulary use is usually seen in daily life

conversations.

Robin Lakoff (1975) suggests an explanation to that in which she said that in this

society women spend much of their time in activities such as color and clothes choosing

more than man do. Moreover, Lakoff (1975), adds that females tend to have more

vocabulary rather than men. This statement was supported by Lindsay Macdonald (2012)

about color naming between male and female. In her article, women are known to have

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broader knowledge about color like magenta, mint, rose and so on. All of them are

uncommon color terms to men. But there is also special lexicon known mostly by men

such as sports, where women probably do not know the meaning of the term offside in

soccer.

According to Wenjing (2012), women always use a word with exaggerated meaning,

such as gorgeous, lovely, cute, divine, adorable, darling, precious, sweet, charming, and

so on. For example, your dress is adorable. While men use simple words to increase the

effect, like good, very, really and so on.

Moreover, Lakoff (1975) found out that females use more boosters than males, such

as “so”, “pretty”, “terribly”, “quite” and so on. Levine and Crockett (1966), W. Labov (1966),

and Trudgill (1972) have speculated that women use less slang expressions than men.

As claimed by Wenjing, women pay more attention to the prestige of their language. (Shit,

damn, what the hell...) These expressions are more likely to be used by men than women.

It can be said, in short, that women do not use abusive expressions in conversations.

According to Lakoff (1975), women use more Tag questions and Hedges than men

do.

The features of female’s language proposed by Lakoff (1975) & Karlsson (2007),

describe the characteristic of women speech, especially during conversations. The

characters are given below:

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The female characters:

❖ Hedges:

Female’s way of speech is usually linked with the tentativeness and the reason

for this may be their way of using hedges. Hedges are linguistic features (e.g., I think,

you know, I’m sure, sort of). Lakoff seems to be convinced that women use hedging

in their speech more than men. Lakoff (1975) confirms in her book that it is because

“women are socialized to believe that asserting themselves strongly is not nice or

ladylike, or even feminine” (p,54). Women use more hedges in their language (Lakoff,

1975). This statement was supported by other researchers such as Bent Preisler

(1986), and Coates, (1993). Preisler’s did a survey, where he recorded groups

consisting of four people of both single-sex and mixed sexes. The participants

discussed different subjects such as violence, politics, economics, etc...., Pareisler

based his assumption on this survey which supports his conclusion. In the other hand,

Coates suggests that one of the possible reasons for men’s lower usage of hedges

is their choice of topics. She adds that men avoid sensitive topics and prefer to talk

about impersonal subjects. Moreover, Coates explains that the choice of topics is

also the same reason behind women’s higher usage of hedges. That is, women

usually tend to choose sensitive topics in which hedges become a valuable resource

21
for speakers because they reduce the effect of what is said and thus protect both

speakers and hearers (Coates, 1993).

In sociolinguistics hedges can be used to analyze topics that are related to

gender. It is believed that hedges are usually used to strengthen an argument,

expressing uncertainty, or showing cooperativity. According to Namasaraev (1997),

there are 4 types of hedging strategies. They are indetermination, depersonalization,

subjectification, and limitation. Indeterminations are used to add uncertainty in a

phrase or sentences. Depersonalization uses indirect reference such as we, the

authors, or other impersonal subjects. Subjectification is used to signal personal

opinion using words such as I think or I suppose. Limitation is used to remove

fuzziness or vagueness in a sentence by limiting word category.

❖ Tag questions:

(Nordquist, 2017), set a definition to tag questions, in which he said that a tag

question is a question added to a declarative sentence, often at the end, to engage

the listener, confirm that an action has occurred, or to verify that something has been

understood.

Moreover, Tottie and Hoffmann (2006) have noted that tag questions have many

usages, and they classified them as the following:

22
 ➢ Informational:

A: You’re getting paid for this, are you?

B: Twenty-five Dollars.

➢ Confirmatory:

A: I am going to try to go running for a little bit. I don’t need a

jacket, do I?

B: No, It’s still pleasant.

➢ Attitudinal:

A: She’ll be in trouble, won’t she?

B: mh...

➢ Facilitating:

A: Right, it’s two, isn’t it?

B: Mm.

➢ Challenging:

A: You put what?

23
 As it can be seen here, tag questions can be used to ask for information, expect

confirmation from the hearer, emphasize what the speaker says, make sure of the truth

of what the speaker says to ease the conversation, or to challenge a statement.

Furthermore, Holmes (1984), defines tag questions as a grammatical structure in which

a declarative is followed by an attached interrogative clause or tag. She adds that there

are two types of tags: Modal tags, which they request information or confirmation, e.g.,

Harry’s away, is he? and Affective ones, that indicate concern for addressee. Affective

tags further are split into two categories, softeners, which reduce the harsh tone of a

demand, e.g., close the window for me, could you? and Facilitatives, which are used to

encourage conversation, e.g., the party was good last night, wasn’t it?

Robin Lakoff (1975), in her work Language and women’s place, states that women

tend to use more tag question than men, but her work was not based on any empirical

studies, because of that, other researchers such as Cameron et al. (1988), came out with

a new assumption which is opposite to what Lakoff said, but unlike her, his work was

based on a survey called the "Survey of English Usage" (SEU). Cameron looked at tag

questions in a 45,000-word sample from the survey, which contains nine sections of 5,000

words each; three of all-female conversations, and three of mixed-sex conversations,

three of all-male conversations. In this survey, 60 tag questions were used by men, and

only 36 tag questions were used by women.

24
 When the data from SEU study is classified, it turned out that men are much more

likely to use modal tags, while they are only somewhat more likely to use affective ones.

Females Males

Modal tags 9 (25%) 24 (40%)

Affective tags 27 (75%) 36 (60%)

Total tags 36 60

Tableau 1 : The frequency and types of tag questions that are produced by both genders.

❖ Intensifiers :

According to (Turner, Dindia, & Pearson, 1995), intensifier is a grammatical tool

(an adverb often) used to modify adverbs or adjectives to strengthens or intensifies

the meaning of a statement. Intensifiers have been typically linked with word such as

extremely, very, really. The function of these words is to scale the quality up, e.g.,

very funny, extremely challenging, terribly cold.

25
 The usage of intensifiers is marked to be as a defining feature of women speech,

many studies have shown that females significantly use more intensifiers than men.

Jespersen (1922) noted that intensifiers were extensively used among females and

was generally used in many expressions like, he is so charming! and it is so lovely.

He also added that women like to exaggerate the strength of an expression; because

of that, they frequently use intensifiers.

This was also supported by Stoffel (1901) who mentioned that “so” is frequently

occurred in women’s speech and is considered as a female characteristic because

of the fact that, “ladies are notoriously fond of hyperbole” (p. 101).

According to (Quirk et al. 1985) Intensifiers are divided into two subgroups

Amplifiers and downtoners, where the difference is that amplifiers [“scale upwards

from an assumed norm”, whereas downtoners “have a lowering effect, usually scaling

downwards from an assumed norm” (p. 589)]. Moreover, amplifiers can be split into

two categories: maximizers which denote an upper extreme point, e.g., entirely,

totally and fully, and boosters which denote a high point on the scale, e.g., very, highly

and severely. In the other hand, the downtoners are divided into four subtypes:

Diminishers and minimizers are somewhat analogous to the two subcategories of

amplifiers, where diminishers scale downwards and roughly mean ‘to a small extent’,

often realized by adverbs such as slightly, and somewhat, whereas the minimizers

26
 are ‘negative maximizers’ such as at all, in the least, as well as and scarcely when it

is used to mean not to any extent.

Furthermore, Approximators, like nearly, and almost, are somewhat special in that

“they imply a denial of the truth value” (p.590) of what is denoted by the modified

item. E.g., `he was almost dead` implies that he was, in fact, not dead. The fourth

subtype is the Compromisers, such as kind of, sort of, and more or less “have only a

slight lowering effect” (p.590) and used to call into question the appropriateness of

the modified item.

Intensifiers

Amplifiers Downtoners

Maximizers Boosters Compromisers

Diminishers Approximators

Minimizers

1.4.2. Theories of Language and Gender

Many well-known linguists like Lakoff, Deborah, Taneen have discussed the different

theories of language and gender based on some approaches. Among them Robin Lakoff

is a renowned linguists and writer who has discussed four approaches regarding

language and gender. With the Deficit, Dominance, Difference and Discursive

27
approaches, the other linguists have started writing books, in order to give a critical

evaluation to the strengths and weaknesses of Robin Lakoff works, and also to form and

offer a personal perspective on the most useful approach.

❖ Deficit approach:

According to Lakoff (1975) the deficit approach describes male language as stronger,

more desirable and more prestigious. She stated that women are socialized to behave

like ‘ladies’ “women are socialized to believe that asserting themselves strongly is not

nice or ladylike, or even feminine” (p. 54). In turn this keeps them in their place because

‘ladylike’ prevent being ‘powerful’ in our culture.

‘Deficit’ approach is the first approach of language and gender. It is initiated in the

early 1970s, this approach sees female language users as disadvantaged. Moreover,

male speaking structure is viewed as standards and criterion while female speaking

structure is the deviation and intention, which implies that females indeed are imperfection

existence in society. Robin Lakoff was the protagonist of this theory. Finch (2003)

discussed her work in which he noted: “The overall pictures which emerges from Lakoff

study is that women’s speech is generally inferior to men’s and reflect their sense of

personal and social inferiority” (p. 137). (Lakoff in finch 2003), Lakoff sees female’s

speech style contains features which are “expressive of uncertainty, lack of confidence

28
and excessive deference or politeness” (p. 137). These features include tag questions,

intensifiers and hedges.

❖ Dominance approach:

Lakoff in her work language and women’s place (1975) “less as the final word …

than as a goad to further research” (p.40). In this she gave rise to the dominance

approach, which links gender differences in language use to the dominance of men within

society.

This approach, dominance approach, was criticized by Talbot (1998), he sees this

approach as “manifestations of a patriarchal social order” (p. 131). To conclude, he stated

that this approach can be sighted along with the difference approach and both of this

approach “provided an early model for the analysis of language and gender in the social

sciences” (p. 132).

Pamela Fishman (1983) is one of the linguists associated with this theory, she did

a study where she recorded mixed sex conversations of three couples, the records were

set up to capture natural conversations (non-planned), to let the participants decide when

to switch the recorder on and off. in this study fishman observed that men usually

maintained control over conversations, also she noticed that women tend to ask many

more questions like they are asking for permission to speak. Furthermore, she found that

men were much more likely to succeed when they initiate conversations in contrast to

29
women whose found it hard to keep the conversations going, she noted that women do

much more work to keep the conversation going (asking many questions, and supporting

men with their speech), but men tend to control the conversation to reinforce their

dominance and social power.

Another study was done by Zimmerman and west (1975), this study was based on

the records of everyday conversations in informal settings such as coffee shops, stores

etc..., the findings of the study supported the dominance approach. In that Zimmerman

and west found that in mixed sex conversations men tend to interrupt women many times,

to reply with minimal and short responses and they tended to talk more than women do,

whereas, women were silent for long periods.

❖ Difference approach:

The most famous linguists who talk about the difference approach was Tannen with

her study ‘you just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation (1990)’. This

approach develops the two-culture model of women and men, where children are

socialized in two separate groups. In this situation she suggests engenders mis-

communication. Tannen is one of the linguists whose distance themselves from the

dominance approach by her saying: “Taking a cross-cultural approach to male-female

conversations … without accusing anyone of being wrong or crazy” (p. 47). Furthermore,

she pointed six points for male and female language. Those points are:

30
 ➢ Status vs. Support

Men use language to assert their dominance, but women use it as a tool for confirming

and supporting ideas.

➢ Independence vs. Intimacy

Men ‘go it alone’; women seek support.

➢ Advice vs. Understanding

Men see language as a tool to solve problems; women see it as a tool of empathy.

➢ Information vs. Feelings

Men are always interested with facts; women are always interested with feelings and

emotions.

➢ Orders vs. Proposals

Women use hidden directives; males use imperatives.

➢ Conflicts vs. Compromise

Women will try to find a middle ground; males will argue

She also added about men and women language:

31
 Women Men

Talk too much Get more air time

Speak in private contexts Speak in public

Build relations Negotiate status/ avoid failure

Overlap Speak one at a time

Tableau 2 : The characteristics of men and women language.

Talbot (1998) noted that “behavior previously perceived as men’s efforts to dominate

women is reinterpreted as a cross-cultural phenomenon” (p. 131). Johnson and Meinhof

(1997), criticized the difference approach because “it fails to address why women and

men belong to different subcultures” (p. 9).

According to Crawford (1995), “men and women…are fated to misunderstand each

other unless they recognize their deeply socialized differences” (p. 1). Furthermore, he

describes how the way women and men talk is shaped by the fundamental differences.

The main idea of this approach is the way women and men develop themselves within

different subcultures.

32
 ❖ Discursive approach:

Cameron. D, a linguist from the discursive field of language and gender, describes

from her feminist perspective how some versions of gender stereotypes can be changed

according to the responses to the shifts in the economic climate. Cameron (2003) shows

how shifts in the economic climate are interpreted and how these shifts influence the

reproduction of patriarchal ideology.

Gender behaviors are explained by the power structures which are inherent within the

patriarchy; as Sattel says: “the starting point for understanding masculinity lies, not in its

contrast with femininity, but in the asymmetrical dominance and prestige which accrues

to males in this society” (Sattel in Thorne et al 1983, p. 119). The discursive element to

the reading of gender was revealed by Sattel’s statement, which opens a broader

discussion and gives a move away from the binary.

Cameron (2006), stated that females in the other approaches ere viewed as less

skilled and effective communicators, but lately men have been ascribed this

characteristic, “not because the actual communicative behavior of men and women is

thought to have change, but that male behavior has been re-framed as dysfunctional and

damaging” (p. 138). Cameron demonstrates how the sociological factors within the study

of language and gender are considered by the discursive approach.

33
 The discursive approach explains how gender is constructed through language within

a cultural framework, in contrast to the other three approaches: deficit, dominance,

difference, which are considered about how gender variances expressed through

language within the physical manifestation of gender.

34
Chapter 2: Research Methodology

2.1. Introduction:

This chapter contains the research methodology that was followed by the researcher

to conduct the research. Moreover, a detailed discussion on the objective of the research,

the significance of the study, instruments, participants, and process of analysis has been

included here. Questionnaire consisting of multiple-choice item was distributed to the

students of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University English department.

2.2. Research design:

This research deals with a small-scale, quantitative survey on gender variation in

Emojis use.

2.3. Research objective:

The objective of the research is to find out the differences between male & female in

the use of emojis among English students of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University.

2.4. Research Questions:

To what extent do male and female students use the Emoji ( ) in reacting to Funny

situations by both Genders?

35
 To what extent do male and female students use the Emoji ( ) in Romantic

situations?

To what extent do male and female students use the Emoji in Sad situations?

How are Emojis understood and interpreted through the context in which they are

written?

What are the reasons for using emojis?

2.5. Significance of the study:

People have variation in Emojis use. This study will show how the students of Sidi

Mohamed Ben Abdellah University differ from each other in terms of gender while using

Emojis.

2.6. Sample:

The participants of this research were one hundred students from Sidi Mohamed Ben

Abdellah University. Among the participants, forty-eight of them were boys and fifty-two

were girls. The age range of the participants is 18-35 years.

36
 2.7. Instruments:

The participants were given a questionnaire for conducting the survey. Online form of

questionnaire has been distributed among the participants. Therefore, the main sources

of information of this research are: Survey (see the appendix).

2.8. Survey Questionnaires :

An online form that includes several questions on which respondents are expected to

write their own thoughts and beliefs is known as a questionnaire. To assure

questionnaire’s validity and reliability, the consultation with the supervisor and the

literature review of the study were taken into consideration while designing the questions.

The questionnaires included 16 multiple choice questions consisting of 2 options or more.

In each question students had to choose one answer or more.

2.9. Methods of Data Analysis:

Collected raw data were analyzed by Google Forms. It is also used to make tables,

drafts and calculating percentages.

37
 2.10. Procedure:

The research was administered in Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University. The

researcher shared the link of the questionnaire in five groups of English department that

belongs to Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University.

2.11. Limitations:

The study was conducted among only the students of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah

University English department.

38
Chapter 3 - RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1. Reasons for using emojis:

Figure 6 : The reasons for using emojis

The reasons for using emojis are, in 90 % of the cases, to make the text easier to be

understood. 23 % of the boys, compared to 30 % of the girls, stated that it is because it

is quicker than using the actual word. According to these figures, emojis are used as a

deliberately, and in order to improve the understanding of a text and not as a quicker way

of typing. According to Gunther Kress, the focus of sociolinguistics has moved from, for

example, the exploration of dialects, social codes and issues and code switching, to

become less abstract and with an increased tendency to integrate the linguistic with the

social. Kress continues by stating that this move is for the purpose of representation and

‘making of meaning’ at all levels and all aspects. The social codes can, therefore, and in

39
this context, be explained as a need for making ‘meaning’ and making oneself understood

rather than a social trend, as only 9 % of the participants used emojis for the reason;

‘Because everyone else does’.

Figure 7 : The ways in which people use emojis.

What we are trying to make more easily understood is as follows; 84 % of the

participants use emojis to express emotions and 60 % because they ‘are fun’. Only 11 %

use them because they find it hard to use words. Kress states that the “verbal language

is being displaced as a communicational mode by image, in many sites of communication:

whether in schoolbooks, in the electronic media, and in the information and

communication technologies in general” (p. 67). In this context, this means that users are

trying to express their emotions and trying to make themselves understood by using

emojis. An emoji is used simply as an extension of the text or to emphasize the sentiment

behind the text.

40
 Kress states that the text informs the recipient and that the image provides more detail

of the text. In this context, emojis can be seen as the images to which Kress refers and

his explanation thus clarifies why there is a need for a combination of text and image.

This is important to keep in mind when discussing how many text messages are actually

sent and received with or without emojis that are used to convey emotions or to make the

message easier to understand.

Figure 8 : The frequency of sent messages that include emojis.

40 % of the participants answered that they send about 25 % of their messages with

emojis and 2 % answered that they did not put them in at all. In other words, the vast

majority use enhancers in the form of emojis in their messages and only 5 % use emojis

in all their messages.

41
 Figure 9 : The frequency of received messages that include emojis.

47 % of the participants answered that they receive about 50 % of messages with

emojis, and none of the participants receive messages without emojis. These results

show that there are more messages sent and received with emojis than without.

3.2. Emojis in context (Interpretation and understanding)

The analysis of the respondents’ answers to how they would interpret the sentence,

including the emoji revealed results that were extremely different.

42
 Figure 10 : How people interpret messages that include emojis.

In an open question about which mood the participants believed the sender was in

when writing, there were many differences in the answers. ‘I miss you ’ was interpreted

by 40% as if the person doesn’t care, 31 % interpreted it as a sarcastic message, whilst

18% interpreted the sentence as honest and sincere. The rest of the participants

interpreted it as a regretful message.

Moreover, ‘I miss you ’ was interpreted by 4% as if the person doesn’t care, 4 %

interpreted it as a sarcastic message, 84% interpreted the sentence as honest and

sincere. whilst 8 % interpreted it as a regretful message.

Furthermore, ‘I don’t miss you ’ was interpreted by 18% as if the person doesn’t

care, 64 % interpreted it as a sarcastic message, 12% interpreted the sentence as honest

and sincere, whilst the rest interpreted it as a regretful message.

43
 The final message, ‘I might be late for the meeting ’ was interpreted by 53% as a

regretful message, 24 % interpreted it as an honest message, 10 % interpreted it as

sarcastic, and 13 % chose the answer: ‘the person doesn’t care’.

3.3. The frequency of using some emojis such as ‘ ’‘ ’

‘ ’ in specific situations according to the participants’

gender.

The researcher put in the questionnaire three questions in which the participants were

given two choices to choose from, and a third choice if they choose 'no' as an answer.

E.g.: Do you use emojis?

➢ Yes

➢ No

If yes, what type of emojis do use?

❖ Do you use ‘ ’ to respond to funny situations

Figure 11 : The frequency of using ‘😂’ to respond to funny situations.

44
 In this figure 92 % of the participants chose ‘Yes’ as an answer for the question.

That means they use ‘ ’ to respond to funny situations. Which is not surprising that

the “face with tears of joy ‘ ’ ” is the most frequent emoji in our data. As explained in

section 1.1.2 and 1.1.3, it has been the most popular emoji for years and for several

reasons. Moreover, the results has shown that both genders respond with the “face with

tears of joy ‘ ’ ” to this situation equally (46 % males/ 46 % females).

The rest of the participants chose ‘No’ as an answer. 72,72 % of them use actual words

to respond to funny situations. 27,27 % of them use other emojis to respond to the same

situation. The interesting finding of this question is the answer of one participant, who

used a combination of words and emojis to respond to this situation. The table below

contains the different answers of the participants that chose ‘No’ as the answer for the

question.

45
 Words that are Words that are used to Emojis that are Emojis that are

used to respond to respond to funny situations used to respond to used to respond

funny situations by by females. funny situations by to funny

males. (75 %) males. (33,33 %) situations by

(25 %)
females.

(66,66 %)

Hhhhhh* Hhhhhhhhhhhh*

Hahahahahhahah* Hahahahahahaha*

Hahahahahhahah*

You crack me up

Thug

Expressions like 'lol,

mdr ,xd '

XD

Tableau 3 : What people use instead of the “face with tears of joy ‘😂’ emoji.:

* hhhhhh and hahaha are forms of expressing laughter when oral expression is

not available, like on the internet.

Depending on the results that are presented in the table above, we can illustrate

that males are responsible for using more actual words and sentence to respond to this

situation (75 %). In the contrary of females who are responsible for producing more

46
emojis as an answer to this situation (66,66 %). These are interesting gender

differences.

❖ The second question was ‘Do you use to respond to romantic situations ?’.

Figure 12 : The Frequency of using ‘❤️’ to respond to romantic situations

83 % use ‘ ’ to respond to romantic situations, 30 % of them are males and the rest

are females, whilst 17 % do not use this emoji, but they use other emojis or actual words,

60 % of the participants that reply with words are males. In the opposite 40 % are females.

In the other hand, only 33,33 % of the males reply with other emojis rather than the heart

47
emoji. Which shows that females are responsible of the big percentage of using emojis

(66,66 %).

Words that are used Words that are Emojis that are used Emojis that are

to respond to funny used to respond to to respond to funny used to respond to

situations by males. funny situations by situations by males. funny situations by

females. females.
(60%) (33,33 %)

(40 %) (66,66 %)

I love you, or Some By the word :

poetic expresions
ˈjɑ /sadiqi/
from arabic

I love you
Thanking words

Normal sentences

Tableau 4 : What people use instead of the heart ‘❤️’ emoji.

The findings of this question are similar to the previous one. In the sense that, females

are the responsible for producing more emojis in messages than males who are

responsible for the big percentage of replying by using actual words.

48
 ❖ Do you use ‘ ’ to respond to sad situations ?

Figure 13 : The Frequency of using ‘😢’ to respond tosad situations

The last question was about the usage of ‘ ’ in sad situations. In this sense, 75% of

the participants use it as a respond to sad situations. In the opposite, only 25 % use other

emojis or actual word to respond to the same situation.

49
Words that are used Words that are Emojis that are Emojis that are

to respond to funny used to respond to used to respond used to respond to

situations by males funny situations to funny funny situations by

(60 %). by females (40%). situations by females.(71,42 %)

males (28,57%).

sorry, it's sad I use emojis for

funny situations.
Emojis are not serious

enough to be used in For sad situations

those situations i use i use formal

words. language.

That's sad.

I always ignore sad

situations. If I have to

respond I express my

sadness in text

Tableau 5 : What people use instead of the ‘😢’ emoji.

As noticed in the previous questions, the frequency of emoji’s usage is more related

to women than men.

50
 As expected, the three emojis ‘ ’‘ ’‘ ’ are the most frequent used in the funny,

romantic, and sad situations. Despite the fact that a small range of the participants do not

use them at all in these situations. In addition, they use other emojis or words to express

themselves in those situations, as illustrated in the section 1.2. Which means that the

production of emojis varies from one to other even if they are using them in the same

context.

Moreover, according to the questionnaire’s result, female users are more likely to

produce emojis in text messaging and in different situations. And that is what was

illustrated in other studies conducted by Alecia Wolf (2000), (Tossell et al., 2012;

Nishimura, 2015) and Escouflaire (2018) as stated in the section 1.3 (Emojis and gender).

51
 Conclusion:

In this research paper, the main objective was to understand how much and why

males & females use emojis in conversation. After surveying previous studies on the

subject, a multimodal corpus was built and analyzed in detail, in order to answer the

research questions.

From the research study it is clear that males and females are quite different in using

emojis. This difference occurs mostly in the frequency of using them. Moreover, there are

some common differences and some common similarities in using emojis. The different

ways of using emojis reflects the gender difference. Using emojis differently also creates

many variations in communication.

Finally, it should be pointed out that the way is still endless for researchers to disclose

more and more detailed differences between males and females’ way of using Emojis.

52
 APPENDIX

1) I identify my gender as:

Ο Female

Ο Male

2) Your age

Ο Between 18-25 years

Ο Between 25-35 years

Ο Between 35-65 years

3) How many of the messages that you send include emojis?

Ο No messages

Ο >25 %

Ο >50 %

Ο >75 %

53
Ο 100 %

4) How many of the messages that you receive includes emojis?

Ο No messages

Ο 25 %

Ο 50 %

Ο 75 %

Ο 100 %

5) Why do you use emojis? (You can choose more than one answer).

Ο I don’t use them

Ο Because everyone else does

Ο To make the text easier to understand

Ο Because it is quicker than writing the actual word

54
 6) In what way do you use emojis? (You can choose more than one answer)

Ο I don’t use them

Ο to express emotions

Ο I find it hard to use words

Ο They are fun

Ο To help the receiver understand the message clearly

7)Do emojis help you to interpret the meaning of messages?

Ο yes

Ο no

55
 8)

9) If you for any reason have no access to emojis, do you feel “frustrated”by not being able to express
your emotions, sarcasm, anxiety or being annoyed?

Ο yes

Ο no

Ο Sometimes

11) Do you use to respond to funny situations?

Ο yes

Ο no

56
 12) If not what do you use to respond to such situation?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

13) Do you use to respond to romantic situations?

Ο yes

Ο no

14) If not what do you use to respond to such situation?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

15) Do you use to respond to sad situations?

Ο yes

Ο no

16) If not what do you use to respond to such situation?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

57
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