Emojilogy
Hello there 👋dear reader 🤓. Ever wondered ❓ how a cute message with 💖💖💖💖 and 😘😘😘 at the end melts your heart even though your bae totally forgot your birthday 🎂. I wonder if it has something to do with those 😎😍🥞🧇🚘🚜emojis.
Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and Google have spent considerable resources in developing their emoji libraries. What is it that motivates giants like these to step into a teen’s dorm room and experiment with quickie little visuals? With the advancement of computer technology, emojis have always had a personal connection to what and how a user writes. This strong relation with our tiny digital friends has led many academics to wonder about the science and logic of emojis. Let’s take a deeper dive into what we know so far about our chatting companions.
Theory of Emolution
Emoticons were introduced in 1872, in order to provide non-verbal cues in written documentation. These were usually a combination of punctuation marks available on the standard computer keyboard. They bridged the gap between what is written and what the person’s mood was while writing. Smiley is considered to be the godfather of all modern day emojis and stickers. It first appeared in the 1960s as the first expression symbol. With time multiple emotions and characters evolved from the humble smiley. The first set of emoji was released in 1999 and was created by their Japanese originator Shigetaka Kurita (yes). “Emoji” is a transliteration of the Japanese word yes (e=picture) 文 (mo=write) 字 (ji=character).
Diversity in Understanding
Just like any other design or art, emojis are also subject to the perception of the individual. Thus emojis sometimes bring in ambiguity in the interpretation of communication resulting in inefficiency. What might be “praying hands”🙏🏼 in many parts of the world might just be considered a high five by some individuals. This ends up in a conflict of interest and the real message of the emoji might be distorted. Similarly a “confused face”😖 might be considered a symbol of frustration by some. Thus one must make sure the person/group receiving the message is on the same page.
What if emoji was a language?
Just like verbal language, emojis are capable of conveying meaning as an independent expressing modality and through a combination of various emojis we can even convey subtle messages to our audience. So, it isn’t far-fetched to consider emojis as a primary means of communication. In fact many researchers in the past have tried to explore this topic. Unfortunately for the emoji fanatics out there, experimentation with emojis as a primary means of communication haven’t really been successful so far. This is because emojis are essentially a form of visual paralanguage. Also, in most cases they need to be integrated with text to make complete sense of the message. We also have to take into account that emojis are interpreted the same by everyone and hence can become a reason for ambiguity and mass confusion.
Emotions
Emotions provide rich visuals in dull text documents and hence have become a means to express emotions. Emojis can be divided into three main types of emotions: positive, negative and neutral. However, it is important to note that a majority of emojis used in our day to day are positive but there are also some emojis that can express irony or satire. Different combinations of emoji also have subtle differences in emotional expression, for example, observers found that when combining frog emoji or hot beverage emoji with other emojis, there will be subtle but observable emotional changes.
Psychomoji
Along with emotions emojis have been found to portray the personality of the person using them. A person with some emojis in the status definitely seems to be more friendly than a person with some boring text, even though we know neither. Emojis are said to be closely related to the five personality traits: neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness. It is interesting to note that openness is not an easily detectable trait in face-to-face conversations, yet use of emojis help us explore that side of a person as well. It seems there may be something unique about the online context which facilitates how we make different types of trait perceptions of others.
Right to equal emoji
Researchers suggest that popularity of emoji reflects cultural globalisation. On the flip side of the coin, emojis are now being used by many individuals and organisations to spread their ideology. People must be cautious before being influenced by their cute smiling friends. People’s demand for equal rights, especially amongst coloured communities has had its impact on emojis. Emoji of different skin colors have been introduced to address the lack of racial representation. In addition, the Unicode consortium recently approved emoji that specifically refer to menstruation, which is seen as a step toward getting rid of “menstrual shame,” reflecting that women’s rights are on the increase. Therefore our demands have an impact on how we wish to see things around us.
Conclusion
We have to agree that emojis have become an integral part of our day to day lives. We rely on them to accurately communicate our emotions and feelings. They also tend to add an element of fun to our conversations. No matter how we use them, we must never take emojis for granted, for without them we would be in a baland world with no way to express ourselves completely. I hope you guys liked this article. I am also attaching some extensive article for reference in case you want explore more about emojis:
