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Alice Robb delves into the linguistics of emoticons and emojis:

At the forefront of the research into emoji use today is Stanford-trained linguist Tyler Schnoebelen. By analyzing emoticon use on Twitter, Schnoebelen has found that use of emoticons varies by geography, age, gender, and social class—just like dialects or regional accents. Friend groups fall into the habit of using certain emoticons, just as they develop their own slang. “You start using new emoticons, just like you start using different words, when you move outside your usual social circles,” said Schnoebelen. He discovered a divide, for instance, between people who include a hyphen to represent a nose in smiley faces— :-) — and people who use the shorter version without the hyphen. “The nose is associated with conventionality,” said Schnoebelen. People using a nose also tend to “spell words out completely. They use fewer abbreviations.” Twitter notoriously obscures demographic data, but according to Schnoebelen, “People who use no noses tend to be tweeting more about Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber. They have younger interests, younger concerns, whether or not they’re younger.”

The gender divide in emoticon use is another topic of debate. “Based on the ideology that women are more emotional, the normal claim is that women use more emoticons,” said Schnoebelen. He’s quick to point out that analyzing emoticon use—or any linguistic pattern—along a gender binary is simplistic, but studies suggest that women account for a disproportionate amount of emoticon use.

In a primer on how to use emoticons more intelligently, Roni Jacobson also stresses the gender stereotypes involved in smileys and frownies:

Multiple studies over the past 15 years have shown that women use emoticons more than men. Women also smile more in real life, perhaps because they are expected to be the more expressive gender, says Susan Herring, a linguist at Indiana University who studies online communication. In a 2009 analysis of messages featured on a texting-based Italian dating show, she and her colleagues argued that men and women used their texts to project different identities. The women who sent in their messages seemed to be “performing a kind of socially desirable femininity” characterized by “playfulness” and “fun,” while the men acted more serious.

“There’s this new norm that women are expected to show more happiness and excitement than men do,” said Herring. “If you’re a woman, you may have to realize that if you don’t use a smiley face sometimes, you may be misinterpreted as being in a bad mood or unhappy with the person you’re talking to. I don’t think that’s true for men.”