Smile or fruit, beware of the emoji you send — especially at work

TimesLIVE

17-07-2025

Red heart, banana and peach emojis may look innocent — and they are.
But in what context and sequence are you using them?
That's what could be problematic with the emojis you love sending.
Dr Zakeera Docrat, the University of the Western Cape's forensic and legal linguist, has warned people to think about the messages they send with emojis, especially in the workplace.
Speaking at a webinar under the theme: 'Beyond the smile: Emojis, communication and misinterpretation in the modern workplace', Docrat said one should be careful of the emojis they send.
She urged companies to develop policies that regulate communication in the workplace.
'It would be dependent on what you want to control within the specific workplace but you can never have one policy that would be applied and adopted across various spaces, that would never work. It needs to be a policy that is specific to your needs and as a forensic and legal linguist, it's always good to consult us and to say, these are the issues that we have.
'We need to formulate a policy that controls the behaviour and communication practices. It has to be something that's updated quite frequently,' Docrat said.
What do we deem as appropriate workplace communication?
'A lot of the emojis are open to interpretation, it's based on context, the nature of the relationship between you and the recipient ... If there is a power dynamic between you and another colleague, is it appropriate for you to be sending them an emoji? Is it an appropriate response to send an emoji? Why are you doing it?
'The role of gender is also important and for me it influences the power dynamic, especially if it is a senior male colleague. If a male colleague sends me a red heart emoji, and I don't have that type of relationship where I know them very well and I get sent a heart, I would immediately be offended.'
So, do you know what the emojis you love sending mean and are they appropriate to send to your colleagues?
'What are you communicating with your emoji? Take for an example the tongue out emojis. Are you joking or are you being insulting?'
Docrat, who testified in the Judicial Conduct Tribunal hearing into sexual harassment against Eastern Cape judge president Selby Mbenenge, said emojis mean different things to different people.
Andiswa Mengo has accused Mbenenge of sexually harassing her over eight months in 2021 and 2022.
She has testified that not only did he send her unwanted sexually explicit WhatsApp messages, but had attempted to solicit oral sex from her in his chambers and sent her a photo of his penis.
Said Docrat: 'When we talk about the analysis or interpretation of emojis, we can't be divorced in a sense from the culture and the language in which the emojis are being used. It is very important for an expert, and I don't want to say [expert should] be from that culture or know that language but [the expert] has to have an association [with the culture or language it is being used].
'You have to be able to read the context. Understanding the language that is being used in a written text, understanding the culture is extremely important.'
Emojis with sexual connotations included a peach and eggplant with water droplets used in sequence; an eggplant, banana, lips, lip biting, also used in sequence.
'We would never associate a doughnut or a pointing finger emoji with having sexual connotations but if we're using them in these sequences, you will notice that it means something. You don't even need to use any text to understand what is being represented here,' said Docrat.
'If you look at the eggplant, the banana, the lips, the biting of the lips, there's a specific sequence. The heart eyes emoji, the hearts around the face emoji, all these have sexual connotations.
'The [use] of hearts emojis are context specific. If somebody is sending me a white heart emoji, am I associating it with sympathy? Others might say it is pure love. [When you send the] black heart, are you saying somebody has got a black heart, are they evil perhaps or do they have evil tendencies?'
Selective emojis with harmful connotations include a coffin, knife, bomb, axe, blood, faeces and tombstone.
'What happens when you send the coffin emoji or the tombstone or the blood emoji to somebody? What are you really saying? If you are sending [a coffin or tombstone emoji] in the context of a funeral ... but should you really be sending these emojis?