Impact of Emojis on use of English Language used on Social Media

Abstract

Emojis have become an essential part of communication over social media. Communication over social media has some of the interesting attributes dedicated to usability and ability of an attribute to captivate the natural intent of users to express better and in newer ways. Emojis have been studied alongside their cousins‟ emoticons and smileys for some time now. Linguists are curious if there is a new language coming up with emoji games and emoji quizzes making popular entertainment over the virtual world. The present study is based on a detailed study of research material pertaining to the emojis and an online survey (N=120) conducted through the social media platforms of WhatsApp and Facebook. Using Likert‟s scale, the users have been assessed for factors like comfort, ease in expression, fun and confusion that these emojis might bring in. The population had a participation of 120 users. Interestingly, the analysis confirms a massive liking towards the emojis and shows a trend towards youngsters in the said group using them more
often to enhance expression and reduce ambiguity. The set of participants administered even had a certain inclination towards preferring an altogether emoji book over a normal book written in text.
Emojis, however, appeared to have a little impact on the use of the English language over social media.

Keywords: Social media, English on social media, audio-visual communication, language tools on social media

JEL Classification: Z38,I12,I21,I23,