Emojis Go Where Language Can’t
Regardless of your opinion, emojis have entered our lexicon and become indispensable to everyday communication. They’re in our texts, our movies and sometimes, our Slack channels. This isn’t surprising when we consider our primitive knack for pictorial communication. In a way, emojis are a return to our cave painting, hieroglyphic roots.
This isn’t to say that emojis aren’t controversial. The biggest critique of the anti-emoji crusade is that they devalue language. They’re slighted for the same reason that graphic novels are snubbed in the literary canon — pictures are perceived to be juvenile. We use pictures to communicate with people who aren’t able to understand verbal or written (read: more advanced) communication.
In honor of this World Emoji Day, I’m asking you to think of all the ways emojis complicate our language and make it more expressive by allowing us to play with meaning in the juxtaposition of text and image. A sarcastic and potentially callous response can be undone with the addition of a winky face emoji, implying a more playful sentiment. For whatever reason, a short string of heart eyes emojis doesn’t fall as flat as an exclamation point heavy “I love it!!!”, which runs the risk of Regina George-esque insincerity, when trying to convey one’s absolute adoration for something.
Emojis are also helpful in succinctly encapsulating emotions and feelings that are too visceral to encapsulate succinctly or adequately in English. In this way, they mirror the capabilities of the German language, which, despite its audible brusqueness, is magical because it has single words for feelings and concepts that we struggle to capture easily in English. They’re delightful because they seem hyper-specific to a language that fails to express some of our most gut feelings and familiar sensations — for example, treppenwitz is the word for the sharp, witty comeback you think of well after it’s too late to use. It’s a universal feeling without an English name.
Consider the face-palm emoji and all it contains, how perfectly it conveys the exasperation that accompanies wordless disbelief. It’s the only thing to say when there’s nothing left to say and averts the sticky paradox of trying to respond to something you truly have no words for.
Additionally, Emoji fluency is a valuable skill. To use them accurately, one must understand their subversiveness and also have a larger understanding of the surrounding cultural connotations and the expectations of their audience. After all, a peach emoji is so much more than a pictorial representation of a delicious fruit. It’s delightful to see companies and public figures get emojis right (like for example Australia Foreign Minister Julie Bishop when describing serious foreign relations with emojis in an interview with Buzzfeed) and cringeworthy when they fail (take Penguin House’s attempt to translate classic literature into emoji in a move that felt patronizing to a new generation of Shakespeare readers).
Perhaps the next great American novel won’t be written in emoji, but it’s clear that they’ve entered our discourse. When used effectively, emojis can help brands earn credibility, especially from younger generations that are hardwired for emoji fluency. When used in everyday life, emojis simply help us express the full range of human emotions in an increasingly nonhuman, digital world.
