Emojis take centre stage at judge president's sexual harassment hearing

EMOJI interpretations and sexual connotations in message exchanges came under the spotlight as forensic and legal linguist and researcher Dr Zakeera Docrat took the stand at the Judicial Conduct Tribunal hearing into sexual harassment complaints against Judge President Selby Mbenenge.

- CHEVON BOOYSEN

Docrat yesterday testified on conversation exchanges between complainant Andiswa Mengo and Mbenenge, which the linguistic expert described as starting courteously and professionally but “slowly degenerated” as emojis used in the message exchanges became sexual and flirtatious.

Docrat prefaced her evidence concerning knowledge of interpreting emojis after Griffits Madonsela SC, counsel for Mbenenge, said they did not dispute her qualifications and expertise; however, they disputed “her expertise in emojis”.

Docrat submitted that she had, since 2018, researched how emojis are used and related this to the South African context, which is multicultural and multilingual. She further added that her expertise stretched to forensic and legal linguistics and the symbiotics of law linguistics.

With regard to the symbiotics of law, Docrat said it was an advantage to interpret socio-linguistics as emojis are non-verbal and don't transfer tone or accent, but must be interpreted in a specific context.

Docrat said the interpretation of emojis sent and received between the two parties escalated to a sexual nature over time.

Describing the functions of emojis, Docrat said that this could be categorised into four functions when taking into consideration the sequence of emojis.