Accommodated Emoji Usage: Influence of Hierarchy on the Adaption of Pictogram Usage in Instant Messaging

Abstract

Communication Accommodation Theory predicts to what extent individuals accommodate their verbal and nonverbal behaviour by converging it towards their conversation partner or diverging it away from them to gain social approval and to decrease social distance. Especially individuals in lower hierarchy positions accommodate their communication behaviour towards individuals in higher hierarchy positions. Nowadays, computer-and smartphone-mediated communication are common ways to communicate, for example via instant messaging. However, instant messenger lack in transporting nonverbal cues. To fill this gap, emoji are used increasingly. A study was conducted to examine how individuals in lower hierarchy positions converge their emoji usage towards individuals in higher hierarchy position. The results support the assumption that the higher hierarchy is perceived, the more emoji accommodation is shown.

How is Linguistic Accommodation Perceived in Instant Messaging? A Survey on Teenagers’ Evaluations and Perceptions

“…Finally, note that accommodation through extra-linguistic (chatspeak) markers such as emoji is not specific or limited to the reference corpus, but has been observed in related work too (Adams et al, 2018;Kroll et al, 2018;Wolf, 2000). Furthermore, other studies have also generalized or translated the phenomenon of accommodation from "classical" genres (e.g., spoken, face-to-face dialogue) to online textual interactions, zooming in on linguistic features that fall outside the scope of the present paper, such as temporal patterns (Doyle et al, 2016;Riordan et al, 2013Riordan et al, , 2014Scissors et al, 2008Scissors et al, , 2009.…”

“…When conversation partners differ in social power, convergence by the “high” power/status person tends to be negatively evaluated by the “low” power/status person, as it violates social expectations (Muir et al, 2017). In such contexts, one-sided adaptation to the person with greater power seems desired and common (Dragojevic et al, 2016; Kroll et al, 2018; Muir et al, 2016, 2017). But the present study shows that that does not hold in the context of educational track.…”

“…But when people differ in social power/status, convergence by the "high" power person tends to be negatively evaluated by the "low" power person as it violates social expectations (Muir et al, 2017). In such contexts, "upward" convergence-one-sided adaptation to the person with greater powerseems to be desired and common (Dragojevic et al, 2016;Kroll et al, 2018;Muir et al, 2016Muir et al, , 2017. Alternatively, divergence occurs in these situations (Muir et al, 2017).…”

“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

“…Despite the general lack of studies investigating accommodation effects in online formats, a few research teams have taken on the task to consider emoji in terms of accommodation. One such study by Kroll et al (2018), for example, has investigated emoji conversion in instant messaging. While their study only focuses on emoji accommodation in relation to social hierarchies, it does reveal accommodation effects in emoji use, showing that individuals converge toward their interlocutor's use of emoji if they perceive their conversation partners to possess a higher Recognizing accommodation effects and possessing knowledge about which linguistic features are susceptible to accommodation can be particularly crucial in authorship analysis tasks that involve dialogic forms of texts.…”

Generational Differences Related to Linguistic and Discourse Features of WhatsApp Users of Texting

“…The signs of emoticons are also representative between supplementing verbal content and also semantic properties of sentence structure [13]. Pictogram, or in short is emoticon, certainly uses by woman and young age people to show their nonverbal cues [14]…”