HATE EMOJI IN FORENSIC LINGUISTICS EXPERTISE: PROBLEMS OF DECODING THE MEANING

Abstract

The era of the "Network society" acquires a continuous transformation, constantly changing the emphasis of the ontological and ontic essence of human species homo ciberneticus. However, communication remains fundamental to human existence as a substratum of interpersonal understanding, with its intended consequent effect on the various spheres of the existential paradigm. Language, as the ousia of human consciousness and the process of humanization in general, is a true substance that encodes communicative acts, that in computer being attains a broader problem of decoding. That is why in our research, we explain one of the most popular types of digital communication today: verbal messages using the artificial language emoji and non-verbal texts just with the help of optical signs. The purpose of the article led to the derivation of a hypothetico-deductive theory of allowing emoji approval in forensic linguistics expertise. That theory we have approved in the probable court cases of Ukraine with an appeal to the emoji has already approved in forensic expertise in the global context. After selecting specific emoji from different forensic cases in Europe and the United States, we have implemented an experiment with the creation of an empirical construction: a mock text with the coded contexts using selected emoji. Respondents had to decode emoji based on individual perception and interpretation. The results of the experiment with its subsequent analytical processing demonstrated the possibility and necessity of involving emoji in forensic linguistics expertise as an iconographic or pictographic type, which is relevant to the specificity of global digitization and the organization of digital communication. Taking into account all the verification stages of the data obtained, we have nominated the selected emoji as hate emoji, which are capable of destroying the communicative act and which are a digital correlate of hate speech.