The Use of Emoticons/Smileys in English and Arabic Netspeak: A Contrastive Study

Abstract

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.