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. 

Docrat on Tuesday 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.

The functions were described as substitution, where an emoji replaced a word, reinforcement, where it enhances a word or phrase, contradiction, where it could mean something completely different as it did not correlate to the thread of a text, and complementation, which adds to or is an additional sentiment.

Interpreting several emojis, Docrat testified that a set of eyes could be interpreted as “pervy eyes”, a hug emoji was interpreted as warmth, while a yellow emoji with a tongue out and closed eyes depicted want or desire, or could be interpreted as “delicious”.

She further submitted that Mengo tended to use the hysterical laughter emoji as an automated response when she made light of a topic or “laughed it off”.

According to Docrat, the manner in which Mengo responded to the chat exchanges showed a linguistic fingerprint or linguistic marker in how she responded to Mbenenge’s messages and requests.

Docrat said as the parties had the same cultural background and conversed in isiXhosa, there was “no misunderstanding” in their chat exchanges.

Referring to an acronym message sent to Mengo where Mbenenge wrote “BJ=?”, Docrat interpreted the context as Mbenenge asking for a blowjob.  

Subsequent messages to the request was a response where Mbenenge wrote: “I was going to give you this one”. The message was followed up with an emoji of a single peeled banana. 

Docrat testified: “Within this context and following on the previous days conversations where it referred to the BJ, my interpretation of the peeled banana is a circumcised penis. In response, the complainant followed up with hysterical laughing emojis. She laughed it off.” 

Tribunal evidence leader, senior State Advocate Salomé Scheepers, questioned Docrat if this response would be substantiated by previous evidence given by Mengo in which she said she did not know in certain instances how to respond to Mbenenge’s communications to her and used the hysterical laughter emojis instead, as he was her boss.

Docrat confirmed that the laughing emojis were used as an automated response and was a standard response of Mengo by using the laughing emojis, indicating that she made light of it and “laughed it off”. 

In another chat exchange between the parties, Docrat confirmed that the context and sequence in which Mbenenge used an eggplant and peach emoji while speaking of the “intimate route”, the emojis were used with a sexual connotation referring to the penis and vagina, and were used as reinforcement to interpret the word “intimate”. 

In another chat exchange after learning that Mengo had fallen ill, Mbenenge wrote: “I must come give you a boost,” followed by a syringe with liquid in it.

Docrat explained that on some devices, the syringe would be empty; however, on the Samsung devices used by the two parties, the syringe contains a liquid. 

“The syringe was used in a sexual connotation referring to the penis. It was not used in the context of its standard use or purely as an injection. It had sexual connotation and by my interpretation, in this context, it meant the penis,” said Docrat. 

Cape Times