Oman’s most popular emoji is the ‘face with tears of joy,’ according to research conducted by an Omani professor.

Dr Fathiya Al Rashdi, an assistant professor at the Department of English in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), observed two WhatsApp groups: a male only and a female only group, for over a period of three months and found that the ‘face with tears of joy’ was the most popular emoji used by the two groups. 

This was followed by the ‘grinning face’ at number two and the ‘smile’ emoji at number three. The age range in the male WhatsApp group was around 26 years and it ranged between 18 and 32 in the female group.

Al Rashdi holds a Bachelors and Masters degree in teaching English as a Foreign Language; however for her PhD she wanted to explore the field of ‘sociolinguistics.’

“I carried out this research as part of my PhD dissertation on sociolinguistics at the Georgetown University in Washington D.C. However, the data for this research was collected from Oman. I was interested in the subject because a lot of people are using emojis so I wanted to know why and how people use them.”

Al Rashdi also found out that females used more emojis than males, and females also repeat emojis to express greater emotion and enthusiasm.

“There are some gender differences I observed. Females use a lot more emojis than men and they use repetitive emojis, so if they are happy, one laughter emoji is not enough, and they will use four or five or sometimes 10 if they are very enthusiastic, it’s just to express more emotion. Also if men don’t disagree with something they will use the ‘thumbs down.’”

Another notable point in Al Rashdi’s research was about the placement of the emojis, “I found that emojis are usually placed at the end of the text or they are sent out only as icons without any text.”

Although emojis are now being used more than ever, Al Rashdi doesn’t think that they will take over text. “Emojis won’t take over text, and I don’t think it will ever, because people are still talking using language. It’s just that people want to be fast with their interactions, and emojis are used to support text because there are some emojis, which acquire their meaning from the context. Some are also ambiguous.”

She further went onto say that the context is really important. “When you see online and face to face communication, the latter has facial expressions, body language and other features, which helps you interpret the meaning correctly, but in online communication we lack that, so the context helps you interpret. When you type ‘I hate you,’ it can be taken seriously, but ‘I hate you’ with a teasing or happy emoji means I am joking with you, or don’t take me seriously on this.”

“Sometimes, emojis are also used to terminate conversations. If you keep writing text and I am only responding with emojis, it means I am not in a mood to talk. A lot of the times Omanis use the two eyes to ask ‘are you available’ or ‘can I talk to you,’ so it’s to make an offer to start a conversation.”

Source: Timesofoman