Abstract:

Smileys, emoticons, so called “smiley faces” created from punctuation marks, celebrated their 36 anniversary in September 2018. The first such sign ”:-)” had quickly become popular and since that time emoticons have undergone a real evolution. As stated by “Hindustan Times”, 92 percent of internet users use them in communication. They can express emotions, indicate some activity, place, animal, thing etc. There are indications that we are facing a kind of return the pictographic script in the contemporary world. Does it mean that a universal language is being created, which is recognized all over the world?

“Smiley faces” conquered continents one after another. Nowadays, they are present on electronic devices and used in various situations and cultures. They still change the way of interpersonal communication. They occur in various promotional campaigns, in internet comments of country's leaders, among everyday consumer goods. It happens that teachers hesitate to add them to test or examination grades. In a way, they help to express emotions in communication, shorten time of discussion, but they sometimes also give rise to misunderstandings. Most of emoticons have the same or similar meaning in various communicators and environments. However, there are also some discrepancies [e.g. “8-)” may mean “rolling one's eyes” or somebody in glasses]. They are used intuitively and quickly understood in the context and quickly popularized. It is also possible to notice so called hybrids of emoticons (which means emoticons that are a combination of two e.g. ”8)” and ”:D” gives ”8D” – happiness, very wide smile), or even such that exist only in theory, but are not used in practice, such as manga emoticons.

Emoticons are often called virtual emotions. Without them communication in the network or through SMS would be as poor as traditional verbal communication without body language: gestures, miming, tone and timbre of voice etc.

The research concerning assessment of the value of emoticons in communication, frequency and popularity of their use in everyday life was conducted among students of pedagogy at the Jan Dlugosz University in Częstochowa, Poland and students of the University of Prešov in Prešov, Slovakia in winter term of the academic year 2018/2019. The goal of the study was to learn how popular emoticons became in social communication, how they “pervaded” the way of speaking and writing and how they were assessed by young people.

Diagnostic survey was applied. Sheets with emoticons were given to students aged 21 23. The sheets comprised both picture emoticons as well as those created from standard keyboard signs, which after a 90° rotation create facial expressions. Students were asked to describe meaning of the emoticons. Next technique was questionnaire, and the used survey form comprised 10 questions, whose aim was to gain knowledge about, among others, frequency of use of emoticons, percentage of emoticons in the message, use of gifs, snaps and other animation. The questions concerned also the knowledge about rules for their use adopted by network users and evaluation of the relevance of their use in modern communication.

Keywords:

Emoticons, emotions, communication, message, way of communication, pictographic script.