Smilies (aka emoticons) are gradually becoming an element of our culture. With the advent of the Emoji app for smartphones, the process will certainly go faster.
In the 1960s, the writer Vladimir Nabokov proposed to introduce a graphic sign in the language that would express emotion. But he could hardly have imagined that communication with the help of small faces would become familiar to many of us. Meet: the application for smartphones Emoji (emoji), which is now, albeit in quotation marks, called the “language of emoticons.” A few pictures are enough to arrange a meeting, discuss the news, confess your love. There are about a thousand icons in the dictionary of an advanced emojiist. Much more than Ellochka the cannibal, the heroine of the novel “12 Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov, whose vocabulary, as you know, consisted of only 30 words. Enthusiasts are already enthusiastically preparing “translations” of classical works into emoji. But is it worth fearing the “smiley revolution”? Philologist Maxim Krongauz believes: whether we like it or not, emoticons (the scientific name for emoticons) have become part of the culture. We involuntarily strive to endow e-mail with the features of live communication, and emoticons can make up for the lack of emotions. But a picture is just an image that cannot convey the full meaning. “Emoji dictionaries are more like shops of funny toys where you can look at them, take them or buy them, but you don’t have to do anything with them,” says Maxim Krongauz**. It is no coincidence that today, of all the smileys, most of us still prefer just a smile. 🙂
* V. Nabokov “Strong opinions” (Vintage Books, 1990).
** M. Krongauz “Albansky’s Self-Teacher” (AST, 2013).