Létezik olyan, hogy nőies, férfias és semleges emotikon? : 12 emotikon minősíthetőségének vizsgálata egy kérdőíves attitűdvizsgálat alapján

This paper is related to research on language use on the Internet and gender linguistics. It briefly describes an online questionnaire attitude survey conducted in November 2020. In this questionnaire, it was examined whether women and men communicate differently in the discourse-type called chat, in the opinions of informants who filled in the questionnaire. This main research question was addressed by the overall research in several different ways. One focal area was the use of emoticons. In the study I present the results of one task from the questionnaire that asked informants to classify twelve emoticons as feminine, masculine, or neutral without any context. Therefore, classification had to be performed based on the way the emoticons were represented. The twelve emoticons were shown to the informants in a picture attached to the task. According to the results some tendencies can be identified in the visual appearance of emoticons which can imply feminine, masculine, or neutral qualification even without context. But these are only general statements whose contextual validity is shaped by certain factors. For instance, the nature of the relationship between two communicating parties can affect what emoticons are used, regardless of the gender of the parties.