Funny pictures with faces, cats and hearts have long become an attribute of our daily Internet communication. Friendly correspondence is no longer complete without “emoticons” or at least brackets that mimic a smile. We put them almost without thinking, as we would put an ellipsis or an exclamation point.
Of course, sometimes we still catch ourselves thinking: how will our interlocutor react? Will he accept this format of communication or consider it familiar? But it is already obvious that emoticons, or emoji (as they are called all over the world), have gone beyond the informal communication of teenagers. They were “noted” and appreciated even by politicians and statesmen.
Icon became the word of 2014 according to the agency Global Language Monitoring. Users have sent this symbol to each other more than a billion times (one). Linguists, psychologists and educators argue, what is more in our passion for emoticons – good or bad? Is our communication becoming frivolous and frivolous? First you need to figure out: where did emoticons come from and why do we need them?
Just like children
Pictures-pictograms as communication tools arose in ancient times. The thinking of the ancient people was extremely specific – “what I see, I speak about it.” It was possible to save and convey information with the help of drawings that depicted familiar objects and plots – people, animals, the hunting process. Gradually, the drawings became more schematic, turned into symbols. Symbols, in turn, were tied to words. Thus, a single oral-written language was born. But now the process seems to have gone back – we are again exchanging images with a specific and understandable meaning. But the similarity here is only in form. In essence, there are fundamental differences between the early proto-language and modern emoticons.
First, emoticons, despite their popularity, remain auxiliary symbols. We resort to them when we want to make communication more free, to include an element of the game in it. The fact that we are still sometimes embarrassed when sending a smiley to an unfamiliar person suggests that we consider it an attribute of a “childish” rather than an “adult” style of communication. And, having met misunderstanding, we can easily switch. Secondly, today the idea of emoticons no longer seems so naive to many. They respond to current needs of society. Their appearance in the message can serve as a descriptive sign, pointing to the values and preferences of the author. For example, not so long ago, variations of the classic yellow emoticons in different colors became available to users – for people with different skin colors. In addition, two pairs of figurines holding hands have appeared in the collection of badges. The intrigue lies in the fact that in one case the smiley depicts two men, in the other two women.
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And writes as he speaks
And yet: why did emoticons appear right now, in the era of the Internet? Why, right now, we suddenly do not have enough words and punctuation marks? Isn’t all the figurative richness of the language capable of expressing an idea better than a simple circle with a stripe and a couple of dots? “The thing is, our communication needs have changed with the advent of the internet and instant messaging,” explains linguist Ben Zimmer. – We began to communicate more indirectly, with the help of technical means. A 2010 survey showed that teens communicate with each other via text messages more than in any other way (including face-to-face). Written speech is devoid of many expressive means of oral speech. We have question marks and exclamation marks at our disposal, but it is much more difficult for us to express irony or sarcasm without depriving communication of its dynamism.. For example, we tell a friend a joke that we thought was especially good, and we get the following message in response: “Ha ha ha, very funny.” Did the interlocutor really appreciate our sense of humor? Or is he being ironic? If this is sarcasm, what exactly did he not like? Maybe he thinks that the joke is flat? Or does he think that there is no subject for laughter? What if he’s just in a bad mood?
According to linguist Tyler Schnoebelen, the main function of emoticons in correspondence is to soften our speech. “We can be happy, angry, sad, but demonstrating these feelings with the help of emoji reduces their effect on the interlocutor. And this is essential when we do not see who we are talking to. Communication through one text – without the ability to hear a voice, see the interlocutor’s facial expressions, his gestures and bodily signals – looks more rigid and detached. Emoticons become a kind of buffer that reduces this rigidity. On the one hand, they guide us in the emotions experienced by the interlocutor. On the other hand, they show that he does not take his emotions too seriously and expects the same from you. Of course, when it comes to strong feelings, the use of emoticons is inappropriate.
What’s next?
What is the future of emoticons? The number of symbols available for use is constantly growing and is already approaching a thousand. For comparison, in the Chinese language, knowledge of one and a half thousand hieroglyphs fully meets the needs of everyday speech. While playful “translations” of classic works into the language of emojis appear on the Web, linguists are already studying the spontaneous rules of emoji grammar (for example, how we interpret icons with ambiguous meanings – for example, or). Can emoticons turn into a full-fledged language in the future? “According to statistics, the most popular emoticons are still round faces, reflecting simple and understandable emotions – joy, sadness, anger, surprise. Hearts and hand gestures follow, says linguist Vivian Evans. “When it comes to everyday communication, we still prefer to use intuitive symbols that we can easily decipher.”
However, the potential of emoticons is just beginning to unfold. In 2013 performance artist Genevieve Bellaveau created a program called Emoji Autism Facial Recognition Therapy. Bellavo appears as a therapist, and “patients” – ordinary people – answer questions about what emotion this or that picture expresses. Although the program is more of an artistic act than a real-life model of a therapy session, Bellaveau hopes its findings will help push the boundaries of our understanding of what autism is. “One of the main questions that I set myself was to understand the nature of autism and the boundary between the norm and pathology. There is a lot of talk about the autism spectrum, and above all about how to determine whether this or that person belongs to it, explains Genevieve Bellaveau. “Through this action, I propose to look at the problem from the point of view of equality of opportunity: do we need to label and build barriers that limit the field of activity for some people.”
Will emoji become a common tool in the arsenal of practicing psychologists? Be that as it may, the revolution has already taken place. Funny and touching, ridiculous and abstruse pictures have already become part of our communication, and they will stay with us for a long time. Their semi-serious tone liberates us and at the same time helps to better understand each other and ourselves.
1. According to data published on languagemonitor.com