“Depends on Who I'm Writing To”—The Influence of Addressees and Personality Traits on the Use of Emoji and Emoticons, and Related Implications for Forensic Authorship Analysis

Karoline Marko

doi:10.3389/fcomm.2022.840646

Abstract

Converging towards or diverging from an interlocutor's speaking style (i.e., linguistic accommodation) has been investigated in many previous studies and is a highly relevant phenomenon in forensic authorship analysis. Accommodation has also been linked to personality traits, but there is still a lack of investigations of accommodation in computer-mediated communication. The present study thus aims at examining in how far emoji use is subject to accommodation in casual online interactions, and how reliable both emoji and emoticons are as markers of authorship. Further, this study is interested in finding out about connections between both emoji and emoticon use and the Big Five personality traits of agreeableness, emotional stability, conscientiousness, openness to experiences, and extraversion. The results of the analysis show that the frequency of emoji use is indeed strongly influenced by conversation partners, and that both emoji and emoticon use correlate particularly with extraversion and agreeableness. Despite the influence of conversation partners on emoji use, it can further be shown that emoji and emoticons remain valuable markers of authorship to different degrees.

Highlights

The introduction of emoji and emoticons has facilitated digital communication significantly (e.g., Danesi, 2016; Evans, 2017)
All participants have a command of English on at least the B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2021), as this is the level of knowledge required to pass school-leaving exams in Austria, and the level required to study English on a university level
It has to be kept in mind, that the participants only received explicit instructions to use emoji but not emoticon use, which would have required a third experimental group and would have made the experiment too complex

Summary

Introduction

The introduction of emoji and emoticons has facilitated digital communication significantly (e.g., Danesi, 2016; Evans, 2017) Both emoji and emoticons are said to be substitutes for non-verbal features such as facial expressions and gestures, which are common in face-to-face interaction, but which digital environments are normally deprived of (e.g., Dresner and Herring, 2010; Skovolt et al, 2014; Gawne and McCulloch, 2019). Even though the nature of many emoji is ambiguous and leaves much room for misinterpretation and miscommunication (e.g., Miller et al, 2016, 2017), they provide clues to the addressee as to how the respective message is to be interpreted (e.g., Ai et al, 2017).

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion