Emoji use in online communication and differences between genders

Abstract

Emojis are increasingly used nowadays in computer mediated communication and even in daily life. This study investigates ‗emoji use in online communication and differences between genders‘. It aims not only to highlight emojis impact on language and in communications between males and females, but also to explore if they can be counted as a language in the near future. For the relevance of the study, thirty participants were selected from Mostaganem English department. They were divided according to their gender into two groups. The age varied from seventeen to thirty-five years old and they were either students or teachers. The survey was conducted by a quantitative research method in a questionnaire format. Online and printed papers were distributed among the participants. Findings suggested that emoji is widely used and that those pictographs representations are affecting English language in terms of grammar and pragmatic functions. Then, they are understood and interpreted differently among gender where males demonstrated that they have better emoji competence than do females, and this latter are more to use them than the other gender. After that, results displayed that emoji share many characteristics with natural language. Yet, emoji code surpasses any other outgoing system when it comes to universality and being the ideal communicative system. In other words, re-consideration of emoji system needs more acknowledging in its entire linguistic and social dimensions in order to broaden our awareness.