The current study is a quantitative-qualitative, descriptive, contrastive study of emoticons/smileys in English and Arabic netspeak “chatgroups”. It is an attempt to investigate different types of simleys in both languages with their meanings and functions. The data of this paper are gathered through screenshots from synchronous chatgroups that occur in real time. The size of the data is (50) screenshots, and each language has (25). The findings reveal that simleys/emoticons are widely used in both languages. It appears that English has (15) whereas Arabic has (18) different types. In English, chatters tend to use a single emoticon mostly at the end of the sentence, whereas in Arabic, chatters tend to use combinations of smileys instead of words or sentences. This indicates that using smileys is different between English and Arabic chatters. The simleys that are found in both languages have similar meanings. The functions of these smileys are also similar in both languages, but from similey to smiley.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.