ABSTRACT

Emojis are a common way of communicating through text messages, emails, and other types of technology. Emojis are often used to depict human emotion through the use of various symbols. These various symbols are perspectives of individuals who have their own character and vocabulary. With the common usage of emojis throughout such a diverse society, they are subject to interpretation. Some people assume emojis are clearly understood. Some people also assume that their own communicated emojis are clearly understood. However, evidence shows that they are not. With variables such as language, age difference, and phone differences, emojis are misinterpreted more than society thinks. A hypothesis of older and younger generations misinterpreting emojis due to aspects such as age difference was analyzed. With some of the older generation still having the same phone as the younger generation, the emojis were still misinterpreted. A conducted survey took the most commonly misinterpreted emojis and had the generations put to the test. The results of the survey show that both generations are subject to misinterpret emojis. The final research shows that emojis are misinterpreted throughout several aspects of technological communication.