International Journal of Literature and Arts 2020; 8(3): 108-118 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ijla doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20200803.12 ISSN: 2331-0553 (Print); ISSN: 2331-057X (Online) A Comparative Study of the Interpretations of Emojis in Between U.S. and Chinese Users Sherman Chui School of English for International Business, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China Email address: To cite this article: Sherman Chui. A Comparative Study of the Interpretations of Emojis in Between U.S. and Chinese Users. International Journal of Literature and Arts. Special Issue: Humanity and Science: China’s Intercultural Communication with the Outside World in the New Era. Vol. 8, No. 3, 2020, pp. 108-118. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20200803.12 Received: February 27, 2020; Accepted: March 12, 2020; Published: April 8, 2020 Abstract: In recent years, Emojis have permeated online communications. They constantly show up in text messages, chats and emails, playing a significant role in business and daily interaction. Although designed to replace language text and to convert some universal emotions through icons, there are no rules governing people how to correctly define the sentiments behind them. Therefore, users with different cultural background may interpret emojis differently. This have often led to misinterpretation and miscommunication from different user groups. This study examines the correlation of the sentiments felt from a group of U.S. users versus a group of Chinese users by having them rate their sentiments from positive to negative for the top 15 most popularly used emojis. The survey was circulated in U.S. and China respectively and received 402 responses. The study weighted the scores of both user groups and analyzed the reasons behind the misalignment, including the structure of the icon, the local culture background etc. It founded that of the 15 emojis tested, over 60% of them had major or minor interpretation differences between the U.S. users and the Chinese users, and only 40% were aligned. The final conclusion was that the sentiment that the user intended to send with an emoji may not be received to the degree that it was intended among U.S. and Chinese users. Keywords: Emojis, Misinterpretation, Culture Difference has been used to describe a buttock. As a result, in July 2019, 1. Introduction the eggplant emoji and the peach emoji were banned by Emojis first showed up on Japanese cellphones in 1997. Facebook and Instagram. In a recent interview, Instagram The first emoji was created by Mr. Shigetaka Kurita working stated that “[Content] will only be removed from Facebook for NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode mobile Internet platform in 1999. and Instagram if it contains a sexual emoji alongside an He was inspired by Chinese characters and symbols depicting implicit or indirect ask for nude imagery, sex or sexual weather conditions on weather reports. He set out to design a partners, or sex chat conversations”. bunch of symbols which can replace a string of text that can also embody emotions. The word Emoji in Japanese stands 2. Related Research for e = picture, moji = character. In 2016, the word Emoji became officially in the Webster Dictionary. 2.1. Emoji in Businesses In 2010, 625 emoji characters were adopted into Unicode Emojis are getting more and more popular in our daily life. which allowed them to be used in international They constantly show up between people’s communication in communication worldwide. They have expanded to over the virtual world, such as social media, e-mail, and text 3,000 by 2019 that included flags, food, and characters message [10]. Some brands like McDonald’s took emojis into representing different races. their advertising campaigns [3]. In the workplace situation, Some emojis have been adopted to use in local culture to Darics (2012) suggested that people using emojis tend to mean something completely different from its original design. clarify the message and in order to reach a successful For example, the eggplant emoji has been used in the cooperation [5]. digital world to mean a male organ while the peach emoji 109 Sherman Chui: A Comparative Study of the Interpretations of Emojis in Between U.S. and Chinese Users Another study showed that people have over a 92% usage consumers evaluated warmth, friendliness in the interaction, rate of emojis in their online communication [9]. the use of emojis helped to increase the satisfaction level. Communicating emotions was the purpose of their design [7] Meanwhile, in some cases where consumers evaluated and positive emotions communicating emoji are most competence, the use of emojis turned out to decrease the popularly used on the Internet today [17]. satisfaction level. Therefore, whether emojis lead to positive or negative outcome is related to the customer expectations. 2.2. Difference of Interpretation 2.5. Culture-related Reasons Although emojis were designed to facilitate communications independent of written language, studies Park [18] found that emojis were not limited to conveying have shown that different people may interpret emoji specific emotions of jokes, but further indicated socio-cultural differently [4, 16, 21]. Miller found that there was only 25% norms, which can vary depending on the users’ identity. They agreement on the meaning of emoji in their cross-platform also pointed out that cultural differences may affect how study [16]. people interpret emojis, and further explained the fact that A Chinese study carried out by Gibson [8] found that the easterners and westerners prefer different style of emojis. emoji face covering hand related to the use of laughter in Eid and Diener once assessed the emojis users experience interaction in specific cultural context. Another example that between easterners and westerners, and they found both people interpreting the same emoji differently is the goat universal and culture-specific types of emotional experience emoji♻. In the U.S., this stands for Greatest of All Time and is [6]. It is expected that we can find both similarity and certain widely considered as a great compliment. In China, this cultural patterns in the usage of emojis. acronym is not well known and is confusing to most people Several researchers have studied the role of culture in emoji and in some cases may even be misconstrued as an insult. expressions and perceptions. According to Tsai [19], Likewise, there are local meanings attached to some emojis Americans valued excitement while Asians preferred that are used in China that are only known mainly to the local calmness. The Emoji system also contains cultural symbols population. An example of this would be the monkey emoji and thus represented different values. A study suggested that which in Chinese sounds like the word 好 meaning OK while culture played a significant role in perceptions of affect [22]. most of the westerners would not have known this. 2.6. Variances Between Different Platforms 2.3. Emoji and Body Communication Despite the Unicode standards, many major platforms have Emoji is an expression of our inner emotion [12]. created their own variants of the emoji. This means that the Alshenqeeti wrote, “Emojis are filling the need for adding Apple’s emoji for “Tears of Joy” is slightly different than the nonverbal cues in digital communication about the intent and Google’s android platforms’ “Tears of Joy”. Similarly, emotion behind a message” [1]. Twitter’s version of emoji is slightly different from WeChat’s According to Herring and Dainas’ analysis of the corpus of version. Facebook comments, emoji fulfilled a wider variety of functions beside emotional reactions, such as modifying the 3. Survey tone, depicting an element mentioned verbally, riffing, embodying an action, or representing a narrative sequence 3.1. Background of the Survey [13]. An online survey was circulated on http//:google.doc and 2.4. Emoji and the Effectiveness of Communication on WeChat in U.S. and China respectively. Besides asking for basic demographic questions of 1) gender, 2) age and 3) job Several researchers have discussed the positive or negative status, each respondent was asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 effects that emojis may lead to. Some argued that emojis filter whether the emoji that were shown them made them feel out nonverbal/visual cues and can cause less effective positive (5) or negative (1). communication outcomes [21]. Some argued that the absence From the website www.emojitracker.com, the top 15 most of such cues does not necessarily cause less effective popularly used emoji were selected for this study. communication. Instead, this may trigger uncertainty in reduction strategies to make the compensation [2]. Table 1. The Top 15 Most Popular Emoji Used in Twitter. Studies attempt to analyze the results in different cases. One Number of Usage (By Emoji study showed that college counselors who used emojis in November 27th, 2019) e-mails to their clients were perceived as having a lower level Face with Tears of Joy 2,627,324,280 of expertise than those who did not [11]. However, applying ❤ Red Heart 1,265,252,805 emojis in the conversation between seller and potential buyers ♻ Recycling Symbol 965,295,100 had a higher chance to close the deals than those who did not Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes 949,938,383 Loudly Crying Face 796,486,645 [14]. ♥ Heart Suit 737,425,097 Researchers tried to examine how emojis influence Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes 624,583,809 customer service satisfaction [15]. Based on their findings, if Unamused Face 496,985,043 International Journal of Literature and Arts 2020; 8(3): 108-118 110 Number of Usage (By 3.2. Participants Emoji November 27th, 2019) Two Hearts 488,214,287 A total of 46 people respon e from the 0.S.