RESEARCH Victoria Fernandez Ramirez

Second semester LIDILE

RECORD
Linguistic fact: The use of emojis by second semester female LIDILE students.
Area of study: Sociolinguistics, Computer Mediated Communication,
Conversation Analysis
Description: On a daily basis, female (and male) LIDILE students converse in
English and Spanish through electronic devices using social
networks such as Facebook© and Whatsapp©. They use this
applications to share personal and academic information and,
as a matter of fact, their conversations have a large amount of
what is known as emoticons or emojis. These, more often than
not, are used to replace words, phrases and clauses; conveying
at the same time how they are feeling.
Type of research: Qualitative
Topic of research: Pragmatics
Purpose of research: It could be of the utmost importance to decipher if the use of
these icons, known as emojis, is been employed due to a desire
to convey more information in the message or to the desire to
change the “tone” of the message. And if it is necessary to
diminish or not depend so much on its use.
Hypothesis or Research HYPOTHESIS:
Question: Female students feel more comfortable with the use of emojis
since they think it gives the receiver more context on how they
are feeling when transmitting the message.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
1. Do female students use emoticons to emphasize the
message they are delivering?
2. Or on the contrary, do they want to soften down their
tone?
3. Is the use of emoticons replacing written language in
social media?
4. Can the use of emoticons become an asset in language
teaching?
Subjects: 22 female LIDILE students of second semester who often make
use of social media
Context: University of Guadalajara- CUCSH (Centro Universitario de
Ciensas Sociales y Humanidades) Class 93-M
Data Gathering:  Pictures (screenshots) taken from WhatsApp© and
Facebook© conversations.
 Observation guide
Data analysis process: 1. Subjects will be divided in two groups: Group A and
Group B.
2. The researcher(s) will use a list with random
ambiguous expressions and sentences. They will
 deliver these expressions to group A through
WhatsApp© without using any emojis and giving very
little context. They will take screenshots of the replies
they receive to see if the receiver understood the
intended meaning of the sentence or not. At the same
time a record of the data will be kept.
3. Researchers will use this same list with group B
providing still very little context, but using emojis. The
same process will be repeated as with group A.
4. The responses of both groups will be compared
5. At the end, the results will provide the necessary
information to answer the research questions.