1. Receiver Interpretations of Emoji Functions: A Gender Perspective
SUSAN HERRING & ASHLEY DAINAS
Receiver Interpretations of Emoji Functions: A Gender Perspective
INDIANA UNIVERSITY BLOOMINGTON

2. Interpreting Emoji But …
Most research focuses on emoji semantics: emotion/mood/sentiment
But …
Emotion expression is only one function of emoji
Users encounter emoji embedded in contexts-of-use, not in isolation
Pragmatic meanings better capture speaker/writer’s communicative intentions than semantics of individual words (emoji)
Many of the talks today mention emoji meaning. My background is in linguistics, and Linguists recognize that there are two kinds of meaning: semantics and pragmatics.
Most research on emoji understanding has focused on the semantics of individual emoji -- the emotion, mood, or sentiment they express.
However, emotion expression is only one function of emoji; they have other pragmatic functions. Moreover, we know that social media users typically encounter emoji embedded in authentic contexts of use, not in isolation. And if we’re interested in what a user intends when they use an emoji, we should be looking at pragmatic meanings, because they better capture …

3. Gender and Emoji Women use emoji more than men do
Emoji (and sticker) use sometimes perceived as “girly”
Women and men preferentially use different emoji …
… and for different pragmatic reasons
(Chen et al., 2017; Konrad et al., in prep.; Sugiyama, 2015; Wolf, 2000)
We also know from the literature that gender affects emoji use: …

4. Research Questions
How do social media users interpret the pragmatic functions of emoji in their authentic discourse contexts?
Are there gender differences in interpretation of emoji functions?
To what extent do users agree among themselves?
To what extent do user interpretations agree with researcher interpretations?
So, in this research, we ask …

5. The Understanding Emoji Survey
Four content-balanced versions, each with 12 emoji items (modified Facebook comments) + demographic and social media usage questions
13 common emoji types represented, rendered in original format
Distributed over six weeks Jan.-Feb. 2018
658 survey responses received; 523 reported gender and responded to at least one emoji item
352 female (Avg.age: 28.9); 121 male (31.8); 50 ‘other’ gender (25.2)
74.2% native English speakers, 75% based in the U.S.
We created …
An emoji item = one emoji and its local (prior) discourse context
Source: 14 graphicon- and media-focused public Facebook groups, starting with challenging instances

6. Emoji Types and Emoji Included in the Survey

7. Sample Survey Item

8. Pragmatic Function Taxonomy
Mention (e.g., illustration of text)
Reaction
Tone Modification
Softening*
Virtual Action
Physical Action*
Decorative*
Multiple Functions
Other
“I Don’t Know”*
*modified from Herring and Dainas (2017)

9. Pragmatic Functions by Gender

10. TONE ACTION SOFTENING REACTION MENTION DECORATIVE
TONE – crying, frown, tongue out
ACTION – heart, kiss
SOFTENING – smile, big smile
REACTION – grimace, tears of joy
MENTION - kiss
MENTION
DECORATIVE

11. PHYSICAL
MULTIPLE
OTHER
“I DON’T KNOW”

16. Agreement Among Respondents
Within-gender percent agreement on most-frequent choice of pragmatic function by emoji type (with number of survey items for each emoji type):

17. Agreement with Researchers
Agreement on most-frequent function code only: 60.4% of survey items
(F: 66%, M: 50.9%, O: 64.2%)
Number and percentage of questions for which respondents of each gender agreed in their first- or second-most-frequent choice with the authors’ code assignments:

18. Summary of Findings RQ1:
Self-identified females and males mostly agreed in their interpretations
‘Other’ gender respondents differed more from the females and males than the females and males differed from each other

19. Summary of Findings RQ2 and RQ3:
Tone modification is the most common emoji function overall
But different emoji tend to specialize in expressing different pragmatic functions
Interpretations varied, but respondents agreed among themselves and with the researchers at well above chance levels.
All the pragmatic functions were selected as interpretations for emoji use, and each function was selected by a majority for at least some items
Validates Herring & Dainas’s (2017) pragmatic function taxonomy
… above chance levels, considering both random distribution across the 10 function options and weighted distribution to reflect the overall frequency with which they selected each option.

20. Interpretations Context is important in interpreting emoji use!
Understanding emoji semantics is often insufficient to understand the intended meaning of emoji-containing messages
Basic function of emoji has shifted over time from emotion expression to tone modification
Women and men appear to have similar cognitive representations of emoji; suggests differences in emoji use are social in nature, e.g., related to identity performances
The Other gender category differed demographically and in its social media use, suggesting that user age and media platform may be more important than gender in emoji interpretation

21. Applications
Pragmatic function taxonomy could be used to train a classifier to recognize emoji functions on Facebook
Associations between emoji types and functions could assist in identifying those functions
Finally, the findings of this research could be applied to automate the identification of the pragmatic meaning of emoji. The Pragmatic function taxonomy (or a modified version of it) could be used … And the associations we identified between …
I don’t do machine learning myself, but I’d be happy to discuss these possibilities with anyone who might be interested

22. Thanks for your attention!