The pragmatic analysis of hand emojis used in computer-mediated communication (CMC) by Sindhi Speakers: Case Study of Pakistan
Agha Kousar* (Ms-Scholar), Dr. Shumaila Aijaz Memon** (Associate Professor), Dr. Insaf Ali Simming*** ( Assistant Professor )
Abstract
This research is documented to investigate the pragmatic approach of emojis used by people who has Sindhi as their first language in Pakistan. The Focus of this study is to explore the varieties of context interpreted by Sindhi speakers of Pakistan by using emojis in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Previous studies shown that folded hand emojis (two yellow hands placed or clapped firmly together) can be used: apology in Japanese culture, hands for praying in Indian culture, Hi-fi in English culture, and a symbol of Courtesy and so on. The current study used the qualitative approach by using observation and semi-structured interviews as qualitative data collection tools, the population of the study was first year undergraduates who were randomly selected for this research. The data was first transcribed manually then interpreted and finally analysed through content analysis. The study is the pragmatic investigation and will be distinguished the usage of some specific emojis by Sindhi speakers of Pakistan with the usage of already investigated users of different countries in their CMC through their culture or social impact. Nikola Ljubeˇsi´(2016), explored the usage of emojis distinguished in whole world due to variation of their social context. Moreover, the descriptive analyses of the study analysed the results of emojis or emoticon used by Sindhi speakers: multifunctionality, forms meaning instead of corpus, impact of cultural on emojis. The results of the current study are in accordance with the justification of Jack (2012) that facial expressions are not culturally universal, which negects the theory of Universal Grammar (Jack, 2012). Recently, Schneebelior (2018) investigated the use of emojis which shows expressions in CMC are having various verbal modalities, his findings are dissimilar than the finding of this study, meanwhile the study supports that expressions are not innate. In the results, hand gestures are considered as positive sometime the selected hand emojis are having dwell responses according to their culture: positive or negative (meaningless).
Keywords: Pragmatics, Non-verbal communication, emojis-usage, Computer-mediated communication, computational linguistics, culture specificity.