We’ve been getting a lot of texts from our granddaughter, Emily, lately. It’s probably safe to say that every one of them contains (lots) more than one “emoji.” Emojis are just one of the many things that I really don’t “get.”
You faithful readers may remember that back on November 17, 2015 I was astonished that the Oxford English Dictionary, that chooses a “Word of the Year “ every year, in 2015, chose a Word of the Year that wasn’t even a word. It was an emoji — specifically, a “smily face” with tears. You can check the entry for 11/17/2015 if you’re interested in more details.
But back to Emojis… these symbols originated in Japan in the late 90s. The word emoji means “picture word” in Japanese. It seems like these little digital “pictures” are everywhere — I almost never get a text without an emoji and they’ve started appearing in a lot of e-mails that I receive.
Emojis have become a part of our lives… while I still don’t understand why, many people believe that emojis are a great way to add personality to text-based conversation. (I’ll admit that it seems that there are more text-based conversations taking place today than face-to-face conversations.) The texting generation thinks everything needs to be conveyed immediately, and sometimes sending one emoji is easier than typing up a response. And with the de-emphasis of writing skills being taught today, a lot of people think nothing is more expressive than an image.
While poking around on the Internet for information about emojis, I ran across one study that claimed the use of “emoticons” amplify whatever message we’re trying to send. A sad emoticon makes a written message seem sadder — same thing is true for happy emoticons. I do remember in the early days of personal computers, often seeing something like “:-)” fairly often — I guess that would be considered an emoticon, so I suppose emojis are just an “improvement” that has taken advantage of the graphics capabilities of everyone’s computer — and phones.
So with all this social distancing, probably more people are texting than ever before, and that probably means the use of emojis will continue to increase. I found a listing of the ten most-used emoji on Twitter so far in 2020… and guess what? The Face with Tears of Joy emoji was number one on the list. Sound familiar? Yep that Face with Tears of Joy was the 2015 Oxford dictionary’s Word of the Year. Talk about staying power… since 2015, probably thousand of emojis have been created, but Face with Tears of Joy remains the most frequently used emoji. It beat out the Red Heart and Smiling Face with Heart-eyes, that finished in second and third places.
The top ten list didn’t offer any explanation for the rankings — just that they were the most used. After a little digging, I found that most people use the Face with Tears of Joy emoji to underscore a joke, acknowledge a funny comment, or to soften a sarcastic remark.
A cognitive psychologist, Monica Riordan, indicated that studies suggest that 55% of human communication is through body language — gestures, posture, facial expression — and 38% is conveyed by a speaker’s tone and inflection. These clues vanish in text messaging, so people tend to exaggerate their response. Supposedly, the exaggerated nature of Face with Tears of Joy is what makes it so popular — you’re essentially trying to encode an incredibly complex set of emotional and social cues into a tiny little graphic and then hoping that the other person correctly interprets what you’re trying to convey.
Well, ok. But the confusing thing (to me) is that emojis don’t have a fixed meaning, like (most) words do. But I guess that just like any language, you have to learn to “speak emoji to understand….
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