It’s hard to avoid emojis whether it’s an online conversation, on social media, or marketing campaigns. They are everywhere.
Emojis easily be misunderstood because they have different meanings to different people. Imagine your friend sent you anyone of these emojis in their message 😪 (Sleepy face) 😟 (worried) 😕 (confused) , do you think you both can agree to the meaning between them. Does it really matter if you use the worried or confused emoji to indicate you’re upset?
While our interpretation of emojis may vary from person to person, our use of them in sentences can add meaning and context if there is a common understanding. The exception, according to researchers at the University of Illinois, is irony or sarcasm.
For the study, researchers looked at brain wave patterns of people reading sentences with emojis in them. The sentences varied with some emojis matching the literal meaning of the sentence and others being ironic.
One of the patterns, researchers say that was triggered when reading the following sentences was one typically associated with grammatical errors.
“The signal indicates that the brain is reprocessing or reanalyzing the content of the sentence.”
Researchers say the study shows that words combined with emojis can be considered as another form of communicating, like words with gestures or facial expressions.
“I wouldn’t go so far as saying emojis are words, but they can be used linguistically,” Benjamin Weissman, one of the researchers, said. “And what this study shows is that for things like sarcasm, our brains can use information from emojis almost immediately, and in the same way as language.”
What are the implications of misunderstanding the use of emojis in online conversations?
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Joe Gullo