Purpose: Speech language pathologists recommend graphic symbols for AAC users to facilitate communication, including labelling and expressing emotions. The purpose of the current study was to describe and compare how 5-to 6-year-old Afrikaans-and Sepedispeaking children identify and choose graphic symbols to depict four basic emotions, specifically happy, sad, afraid, and angry.Method: Ninety participants were asked to select the graphic symbol from a 16-matrix communication overlay that would represent the emotion in response to 24 vignettes. Results:The results of the t-tests indicated that the differences between the two groups" selection of target symbols to represent the four emotions are statistically significant. Conclusions:The results of the study indicate that children from different language groups may not perceive graphic symbols in the same way. The Afrikaans-speaking participants more often chose target symbols to represent target basic emotions than did the Sepedispeaking participants. The most preferred symbols per emotion were identified and these different symbols were analysed in terms of facial features that distinguish them.