Abstract
Currently, a great deal of information is conveyed through written online communication. However, this leads to a lack of important pragmatic, or contextual, cues that are present in face-to-face interaction such as body language, tone of voice, or facial expressions. One method to potentially reduce this issue is emoji usage. In this project, we studied face emojis and how they affect the interpretation of ambiguous text messages between people with different social relationships and hope to gain an understanding of how emojis act as a pragmatic clue. We recruited 64 college-aged English speakers online as participants. They were presented with short text message conversations and asked to select one out of four possible interpretations for an ambiguous message that was sent from either an imagined friend or acquaintance. Some messages had an emoji present and others did not. Participants were additionally asked to rate how appropriate the message was. Results suggest that emojis do guide the reader and influence the option selected. Generally, more interpretations congruent with the meaning of the message was chosen when emoji was present than absent. Interestingly, despite sharing less social context, acquaintances were more likely to select congruent, perhaps desiring to follow more closely to the safer meaning of the emoji whereas friends have more coded and stylized forms of communication. Therefore, emojis may lessen miscommunication by providing pragmatic information. This contributes to our understanding of the nature of effective communication of written online discourse, though there may be a difference depending on social context.