He and She Wired: Emoticons

The term “emoticons”—short for “emotion icons”—refers to graphic signs, such as smiley faces :) and laughs out loud LOL, which often accompany computer communication. They are most often characterized as iconic indicators of emotion, conveyed through a communication channel that is parallel to the linguistic one.

And whatever you do, don’t use emoticons when sending e-mail to a man. Can you remember the last time you received an e-mail from a male colleague, co-worker, or client that had a smiley face emoticon?  In contrast, women in Internet Relay Chat channels incorporated three times as many representations of smiling and laughing emoticons than men (Herring, 2004). This is illustrative of women’s need to soften the message and build relationship.

In contrast, however, men used emoticons more often to express sarcasm or to banter. Wolf (2000) makes a point that males used smileys for the purpose of expressing sarcasm and teasing  more often than females do. In other words, when a man does employ emoticons it is a specific kind of emotional display.

Women will often use emoticons to soften the blow of negative feedback or mitigate a conflict. She may relay a criticism or point of contention but can soften the message by adding a smiley face: “Remember those stats were due yesterday. :).”  Additionally, for women the absence of an emoticon can indicate a lack of emotion and, in that, a lack of information, especially if the sender is another woman. The exclusion of the ubiquitous (auto-text) smiley face at the end of her message would be like wiping away the ever present female smile or punctuation of laughter at the end of a sentence. A word of warning for women: pay attention to when and to whom you send emoticons, especially at work. A smiley face emoticon in an e-mail to the boss may be interpreted as not taking your job seriously, impacting your credibility.

Excerpt from Audrey’s new book, The Gender Communication Handbook, Audrey Nelson PhD and Claire Damken Brown PhD (Wiley & Sons 2012).