The Use of Emoticons in Polite Phrases of Greeting and Thanks

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "The Use of Emoticons in Polite Phrases of Greeting and Thanks"

Diana Mitchell
6 years ago
Views:

1 The Use of Emoticons in Polite Phrases of Greeting and Thanks Zuzana Komrsková Contact

2 What are emoticons? emoticon = emotion + icon a string of keyboard characters that represent (facial) emotions (Godin, 1993; Thompson Foulger, 1996; Baron, 2000; Wolf, 2000; Provine Spencer - Mandell, 2007; Derks Bos von Grumbkow, 2008) BUT psychology (e.g. Ekman, 1992) mainly distinguish among 6 emotions : anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise redefinition: a string of keyboard characters that shall represent a face expressing a particular emotion or a motion connected often with this emotion

3 Emoticons and their categorization 1. Cultural background: Western :-) Eastern ^_^ (Japanese, Korean ) 2. Emotion: Positive :-) Negative :-( Ambiguous :-P very context-dependent 3. Form: Typographical :-) Picture-like Verbal happy

4 Why are emoticons used? in computer-mediated communication (CMC) - to compensate the lack of nonverbal signals used in face-toface communication - to add expression to an otherwise strictly text-based form - to transfer a coded text to the recipient with as much intended interpretation of the text as possible - to substitute punctuation one occurrence of emoticon - more functions

5 This study of emoticons My inspiration: subjective observation that polite phrases (request, thanks, wish) are often accompanied by emoticons + study about emoticons in (Skovholt Grønnig Kankaanranta, 2014) hello sunshine :D and aw I hope he gets better soon :( Grrrr, I can't record tonight :( thanks for helping out. There will be a let's play tomorrow, don't worry. See ya! Bye :D Thank you follow and comment!!! :) please don't say sorry :( you've done enough, even more <3 thank you so much <3 have a great day :D

6 My hypothesis 1. welcome greeting phrases will be accompanied by positive emoticon 2. farewell greeting will be more frequently accompanied by negative than positive emoticon 3. thanks phrases will be accompanied by positive emoticon 4. there will not be any different in the general tendency (positive/negative emoticons) of both greeting and thanks phrases

7 Overview of this study 600 tweets (100 tweets for each phrase in particular language) greeting phrases: hello + ahoj/čau; bye + ahoj/čau thanks phrases: thank + děkuji/děkuju Phrase Type welcome farewell thanks Language User's Gender Phrase Position Nr. of Emoticons Female Male in the Sample Begining Middle End CZ ENG CZ ENG CZ ENG

8 Greeting phrases: welcome emoticons in almost 80 % (of both Czech and English tweets) situated at the beginning of a whole tweet usually respect a common form for an initial chat conversation, i.e. greeting followed by addressing the welcome phrase in both Czech and English samples strongly tends to positive emoticons Czech sample consists of two phrases (ahoj and čau) they differ only in the number of their variants: ahój, ahooja, ahojky vs. čáu, čauvéc, čauky, čus

9 Greeting phrases: farewell preferred position is the end of a tweet 34 % of all Czech phrases are connected with an adverb tak/takže [so] or zatím [already, yet] a great difference between both languages - several reasons Czech sample is more coincident with the welcome phrases, there is a strong tendency to positive emoticons following the greeting co-occurrence of positive and negative emoticons is for both languages the same and greater than in the welcome phrases. Looking at the data, this co-occurrence presents the weakening sadness of the ending conversation, e.g. i need to go now. bye :) :(

10 Greeting phrases: comparison welcome greeting phrases are accompanied by positive emoticon this tendency was found also in Czech sample of farewell phrases for farewell greeting both positive and negative emoticons are possible, the proportion of only positive and only negative emoticon occurrence is nearly the same Greeting Type welcome farewell Language Nr. of Emoticons Connected to Phrase Only Positive (%) Only Negative (%) Both (%) Other (%) CZ ENG CZ ENG

11 Thanks phrases emoticon distribution in the immediate context of a phrase exceeds 90 % the presumption about a strong connection between a polite phrase of thanks and positive emoticon occurrence is confirmed co-occurrence of both positive and negative emoticons was found in those parts of tweets, where the users express their mixed feeling relating to something unpleasant, e.g. AWWW thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :( :) or Děkuju :(( :D [Thanks :(( :D] Language Nr. of Emoticons Connected to Phrase Only Positive (%) Only Negative (%) Both (%) Other (%) CZ ENG

12 Conclusions 1. welcome greeting phrases will be accompanied by positive emoticon confirmed 2. farewell greeting will be more frequently accompanied by negative than positive emoticon rejected 3. thanks phrases will be accompanied by positive emoticon confirmed 4. there will not be any difference in the general tendency (positive/negative emoticons) of both greeting and thanks phrases confirmed (tendency of positive emoticons)

13 Conclusions Language differences: Greeting phrases welcome: any difference farewell: a great difference why??? Thanks phrases any difference publicly available CMC are not a good candidate for politeness comparison among languages either the use of emoticons with studied polite phrases shows that emoticons have become an integral part of these phrases

14 References N. Baron, Alphabet to How Written English Evolved and Where It s Heading. New York: Routledge, N. Baron, See You Online: Gender Issues in College Student Use of Instant Messaging, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, vol. 23, pp , D. Derks, A. Bos, and J. von Grumbkow, Emoticons and social interaction on the Internet: the importance of social context. Computers in Human Behavior 23, pp , P. Ekman, An argument for basic emotions. Cognition & Emotion 6, pp , S. Godin, The Smiley Dictionary. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit, E. Jandová, Konverzace na WWW chatu. Ostrava [Czech Republic]: Ostravská univerzita v Ostravě, J. Park, Y. M. Baek, and M. Cha, Cross-Cultural Comparison of Nonverbal Cues in Emoticons on Twitter: Evidence from Big Data Analysis, Journal of Communication, vol. 64, pp , K. Skovholt, A. Grønnig, and A. Kankaanranta, The Communicative Functions of Emoticons in Workplace s: :-), Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 19, pp , P. A. Thompson, and D. A. Foulger, Effects of Pictographs and Quoting on Flaming in Electronic Mail. Computers in Human Behavior 12, pp , Ch. C. Tossell et al., A Longitudial Study of Emoticon Use in Text Messaging from Smartphones, Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 28, pp , F. Yus, Not All Emoticons Are Created Equal (Unpublished work style), unpublished. A. Wolf, Emotional Expression Online: Gender Differences in Emoticon Use. Cyberpsychology and Behaviour 3, pp , 2000.

15 Thank you for attention!

16 Acknowledgment This output was created within the project»emotikony na Twitteru«, subproject»mezilidská komunikace v interdisciplinární perspektivě«solved at Charles University in Prague from the Specific university research in 2015.

Sarcasm in Written Communication: Emoticons are Efficient Markers of Intention

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication Sarcasm in Written Communication: Emoticons are Efficient Markers of Intention Dominic Thompson School of English, Trent Building, The University of Nottingham,