Emojis take over words
With the new technological era, emojis seem to have taken over the world of communication. Since the first 180 emojis in 1999, supported only in Japan on a mobile internet service called i-mode, it has now grown nine times more on the new iOS 9.1 and, as a result, sending a pictograph seems simpler than actually spelling out an answer.
Symbols, markings, codes and numbers have been a part of human communication for centuries, whether it be in caves, tablets, parchment papers, letters, e-mails or, more recently, text messages.
Numbers and icons date much further back than the telegram and the Morse Code, but the first officially documented person to use typographical symbols to specifically express emotions was Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, on Sept. 19, 1982.
With the rise of the cellular phones and instant/text messages in the 1990s, Shigetaka Kurita combined the idea of emotion icons (emoticon) and pictographs to create an emoji in order to convey messages in 48 characters or less on a small LCD screen.
Each emoji has a different name with a different meaning, but these are unknown to most users; an individual usually interprets each emoji differently than its true intended meaning.
On Nov. 16, Oxford Dictionary named the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji as the Word of the Year. “What? It’s called ‘Face with Tears of Joy?’” MaryMargaret Bryant, a 26-year-old college graduate said, more appalled at the official name of the emoji, rather than the fact that the Word of the Year is not actually a word. “I always thought it was ‘hysterically laughing’ or something.”
Emojis can be seen all over the internet, from social media to, sometimes, a credible news or educational website. Emojis have been published in many USA Today print issues, but can it truly be considered a word, let alone a ‘Word of the Year?’
“An emoticon, or an emoji, is definitely not a word.” John Francis, a journalism and mass communications adviser at Rio Hondo Community College said, exasperated, when informed of Oxford Dictionary’s choice.
“If I was Shakespeare, I would be turning over in my grave because I’m embarrassed of this generation. We went from having dialogues to sounds and grunts and pictures. You would think we would have evolved from the neanderthals.” Patrick Sullivan, a director and a screenwriter remarked during a recent interview.
People will always opt for an easier and a quicker way to do things and emojis are the shortcut of communications.
“I think they are ugly, and they ruin the challenge of trying to come up with a clever way to express emotions using standard keyboard characters, but perhaps that’s just because I invented the other kind,” stated Fahlman in an interview with Independent UK during the 30th anniversary of the emoticons in 2012.
Emojis tarnish the challenge to being creative with character sequences to create an emotional message. It also makes adolescents lack the practice to properly type correct words instead of commonly misspelling in order to fit them in a certain amount of characters.
Emoticons, emojis, and shortening characters could very well be affecting the ability to properly speak, correctly write, and even catch small errors in a professional setting according to Sarah Ahmed, a contributor to ‘The Affect Theory Reader.’
“I was recently editing my boyfriend’s paper for school and I noticed, a few times, that instead of spelling out the word ‘are,’ he just kept writing the letter ‘r,’ or for ‘you,’ he kept writing ‘u,’ and I know that’s because he’s so used to texting that way.” Jazmin Lucero, 21, of Downey, replied when asked if she has noticed any negative effects from communication shortcuts.
Swiftkey, an input method which predicts the next word on smartphones and tablets of Androids and iOS, did a study in August analyzing more than one billion emojis to categorize the most popular emoji uses in each state.
In the state of California, the most used emoji is the car (officially the taxi). According to Swiftkey’s study, California is the only state that does not have a specific emoji that is used more than in any other state.
Using words to express feelings through messaging is now in the past and emoticons are of the yesteryear. Emojis, however, are today’s preferable shortcut.
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