Emoji Enhances Communication

Emoji Enhances Communication

In an era of Social media and tech boom, the use of emoji is replacing text messaging as a more resourceful form of communication. Barely a decade ago, hardly was emoji recognizable in the mainstream social platforms. However, the rise of social sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter necessitated the young population to reinvent the means of communication to capture emotions. Specifically, teenagers embrace emojis in social media interactions to ensure that the responder gets the intended message otherwise impossible to express via text.

In many respects, emoji is similar to a language because it enables the user to convey a message that influences the mental state or behavior of a recipient (Kelly 15). Resultantly, it alters the social and civil status of the user. Similar to treasured words of any language, emoji is a powerful instrument of persuasion and thought. In fact, they can be utilized as evidence in a court of law against users. Therefore, those that dismiss the likeness of emoji to emotional languages fundamentally misunderstand the functionality of human communication in a digital era.

In future, Emoji could compete with international languages such as English because its emergence is rapid and unprecedented. If this happens, it will be one of the most exciting forms of communication, even though others view it as a linguistic Armageddon. Linguists, however, should be more concerned about the need to integrate visual communication with text messaging. In all measures, emoji shows similar traits to real languages and other communicative systems. In instances that it appears alongside a text, it enhances or supplements writing similar to gestures appearing in speeches. A three-decade long research proves that human hands provide useful information that clarifies and transcends particular messages in a speech. The function of emoji is similar to this too. For example, an addition of a winking or kissy face disambiguates whether a statement is plainly mean or teases flirtatiously.

Fundamentally, it is rare for a natural language to be limited to speech alone. When different parties hold conversations, they use gestures constantly for illustration of what they mean. Therefore, linguists regard language as multi-modal. While emoji allows populace to reincorporate extra non-verbal information into the text, writing takes it away.

Even though emoji are hardly used as embellishments, character strings convey their own messages particularly if they are made up of longer sequences. However, human beings cannot constitute a language unless there is grammar. A grammatical system refers to a set of constraints governing specific ways that allow people to package specific utterances coherently.  Natural language grammars have distinctive traits because they have simple units that perform unique roles in a sequence, for instance, verbs and nouns in a sentence. Furthermore, grammar consists of unit groupings embedded within sentences.

Contrastingly, simple rules on meaning govern isolated emojis, without necessarily the need for complexities. Mostly, they have a negligible internal structure such that if the user rearranges them, it still relays the same message. Ideally, the users can consider them as visual lists. A list is one of the conventional communication methods, but lack grammar. Notably, emoji is currently at its infantry, hence its simplicity. Over time, users will lay groundwork for complexity for its growth and richness.

            The majority of smartphone users send images of happy or sad faces to their friends to express their feelings. In the United Kingdom alone, use of emoji has increased fourfold by more than 20% within a year. Considering this, ‘a face with tears of joy’ emoji can be used appropriately to represent the main ways that teenagers use this platform in their everyday digital lives.

            public use emoji for deeper reasoning too. When used in a text, it sufficiently replaces traits of spoken interaction such as body language, facial expression, and intonation. Undeniably, emojis are not conventional words but provide a remarkable contextual cue that allows social media users to punctuate digital texts emotionally with personal expressions. Most importantly, emoji help people to elicit empathy. Notably, this capability is a central requirement in any effective communication. Individuals influence the way others interpret their message and express themselves emotionally.

            Arguably, emojis are better and more powerful (in some ways) than words. For example, the laughing face with tears of joy emoji systematically conveys a complex spectrum of emotions in a simple glyph (Smith 151). Otherwise, expression of joy requires numerous words. An emoticon such as this evokes an immediate emotional resonance often lost when a string of words are used instead. In other occasions, people have used emoji to replace words through code-switching. Linguists and translators give a grammatical structure to emoticons to function exclusively as words.

Research shows that emoji powerfully humanizes messaging and social media texting which often are expressionless and impersonal. Without their application, it is easy to misinterpret the tone of a friend’s text message

While a section of the population is slow to embrace emoji as a new form of communication, it is undeniable that the platform is quickly becoming part and parcel of everyday vernacular in urban areas. In the year, 2015, Oxford Dictionary named Face with Tears of Joy a word of the year because it looks like crying and laughing at the same time (Harris 10). Despite this complexity, it was one of the most used emoticons globally.

The growing popularity of emoticons and emojis within the digital and online social platforms is indicative of the expanding role that they play in daily communication. In fact, the rise if ideographic representations like these draws concerns from a small group of scholars regarding the future of language. Emoticons still have a long way to guarantee an all-emoji chat service. Irrespective of the weakness, analysts credit them for adding meaning and modifying responses in an environment where interpretation would have otherwise been difficult. Usage is so common and widespread that currently, data exist to demonstrate the placement and use of emojis. In addition, they carry an emotional weight that impacts people’s perceptions of messages framing the icons.

It is important for respondents to understand the mental state of others to communicate effectively. Interpretation of serious statements for a joke and vice versa can affect a relationship between the two parties significantly, though this should not serve as an excuse for passing off derogatory and offensive statements. The human ability to successfully interpret message data is rooted deeply in the in the mind theory, thus allowing persons to employ visual and social cues if needed. For this reason, the young generation looks for ways to confirm their relationships with peers about their status within the network. So, this results in the evolution of texting to incorporate better forms of communication such as emoji.

Interestingly, researchers have discovered that emojis occurs in clusters in a text. On the other hand, emoticons appear singularly in sentences. The significance of this is that persons use emojis to lay emphasis on particular sentiments rather than a clarification of tone. In essence, a string of emojis are used to express a joke or celebration but are not governed by the grammar. It is the only reason why they fall short of language classification.

            Furthermore, academics observe that texting (similarly to technological tools) has surpassed the original; utilitarian role of pragmatic communication to become a form of art. Unsurprisingly, the introduction of next generation of gadgets upholds this argument. For instance, the latest version of Apple’s iPhone has a set of new creative emojis. Given that Apple Company brand is well established, social media users will be quick in adopting the new emoticons found in iPhones. Most importantly, emojis and emoticons are universally understood set of pictures surmounting language barriers.

            In the near future, website designers will develop an emoji-only social media platform where internet users can communicate freely and exclusively. The reason is that emoji has a rich history that has supported its dramatic rise. In fact, it has successfully emerged out of copyright claims, standard disputes, and corporate strategies to become ubiquitous and dominant digital shorthand. In its own way, this new platform informs the users about new horizons of technology and the nature of feelings.

Omnipresent and innocuous, emoji constitute social lubricants smoothing the rough patches of young generation’s digital life. In particular, emoji introduces humor and underscores the tone to reveal user’s personality in an otherwise monochrome space. Statistics show that the consortium has accepted and consolidated more than 800 emoticons have in Unicode. Therefore, emoji’s has a centralized control that enhances its creativity. Each has approximately 144 pixels because it compresses object or face into the most schematic configuration possible. Essentially, each helps a user to map information onto an existing cognitive structure. It can act as an ideogram, ideogram or a conclusive expression.

A flexibility observable in the use of emoticons has a broader commercial purpose. In the beginning, no organization copyrighted its characters to claim ownership and exclusivity. As a result, different software designers injected new forms of creativity in the formation of emoticons. Consequently, the use of emoji drove an uptake of a platform that its standards across the social media industry. Clearly, emoji was a necessity born of practical linguistic that evolves over time to guarantee business and technical consensus.

            Besides the depiction of love, emoji can transform the users’ states of feeling into new big data forms. Specifically, most media companies and other organizations extract and analyze emoji to get an insight on the desires and emotions of their customers (Leticia et al. 121). For example, in the year 2013, Facebook introduced the ability to update statuses using emoticons, which resulted in a wider acceptance over time. However, it is true that the social media company quantifies, tracks, and manipulate the user’s information as part of its business model because when a person selects his current activity rather than writing it out, he structures the data for Facebook. Hence, emoji is mutually beneficial to the social media user and the platform owner.

            There is a high likelihood of miscommunication and conflict when internet users hold conversations over email. Often, a respondent misinterprets positive email messages as neutral, while decoding the neutral mail as more negative. Even worse, shortened or limited communications in the form of tweets are a source of misunderstandings. Armed with this knowledge, it is important for a Twitter service user to introduce emoji between the message words to eliminate any chance of a harmful misunderstanding.

The employees are using emoji in the workplace because it revolutionizes the language. It acts as a discourse particle because even though it lacks a semantic meaning, it adds an intention to a particular statement. In the case of a face threat presence, young people will use emoticons as well. Therefore, online users employ emoticons in such situations to add extra discourse and inflection at work to improve the efficiency of communication in the workplace. More women than men use emoji because they feel that people will understand them better through full expression of their thoughts.  It gives people a taste of a technology that is missing for more than five millennia. History states that hieroglyphs were a common form of ancient emoji. Additionally, Chinese characters which are dynasties-old convey more information that just words, hence a striking similarity with modern emoji.  When social media users employ images in communication, they perform a similar task as that of a voice over the phone. As a matter of fact, emoticons replace thousands of slang each year.

            Emoji is particularly useful to students that take sign language classes. It is a better form of communication for people with hearing disabilities as well, as emoji message can be sent to them instead of holding a phone conversation. It lays a strong emphasis on facial expressions and body language that are important for individuals that communicate in sign language. As emoji becomes popular in general casual conversations, sign language students will understand new icons easily. The students are already known for using smiley faces to communicate with friends and family. As a consequence, they substitute emojis for the absence of body language and tonal inflections in their text-based online communication culture.

Indeed, grammar is useful in communication. However, when a person is texting a friend or peers on Facebook and Twitter, emojis pick up where physical cues and correct grammar are absent (Jarc 10). Arguably, the rise in the use of social media platforms such as Snapchat, Youtube, and Hangouts is directly linkable to the adoption of emojis in such sites. When doing so, the software designers’ intention was to re-introduce physical expression lost with the advent of the internet and social media boom.

Verbal cues, on the other hand, are not effective since the tone of people speaking is monotonous. Therefore, a disguise of seriousness or sarcasm is possible in a verbal inflection.  Bloggers use videos to communicate with their colleagues because it takes time to understand a sense of humor verbalized communication. They prefer to see a respondent to study their physical attributes exhaustively for a true comprehension of what they pass across. In case there is a lack of a visual form of communication, emoji sufficiently replaces it while written words do not.

Most people that use social media seek fame and popularity. The utilization of emoji in a platform such as Instagram or Facebook enables the user to stand out in a crowded field. In this way, he gets more acceptance and following. As new and amateur users discover this strategy, they embrace the new communication technique, hence leading to a gradual growth and use of emoticons by the public. The emoji features achieve high performance particularly on Twitter and news-oriented social media, suggesting an existence of a strong link between social power and emoticons.

People react to emoji and emoticons the same manner they would a human face. Ideally, it is the closest way possible (after video conferencing) that a social media account owner can reach out to his followers and fans like he would in a face-to-face conversation (Huang et al. 467). Further, it is a new language form that the populace produce, but to decode it, the users must introduce a new pattern of brain activity. In the long run, analysts project that emoji will make a difference to marketing and social media given that human faces (commonly in use but will may be phased out by emoticons) are not as effective when grabbing attention.

In business settings, emoji are excellent. Today, employees use dozens of smiley faces in emails and organization internal communication cycle. When two emails, one with smiley and the other without, were sent to one employee to study their reaction, the researcher discovered that the worker liked the mail with emoji. Besides, the research revealed that emoticons cannot affect the senders’ credibility even when they use half a dozen in one message. In a task-oriented context where the leadership strongly recommend unsociable, impersonal, and cold computer-based communication, use of emoji in e-mail creates a positive expectancy violation through friendliness.

Still, emoji softens the blow of a critique. For example, if a business manager in a corporation accompanies a negative feedback with positive emoji, the workforce will likely react positively to the message thus making constructive changes to their activity as per their superior’s recommendations (Suhay 1). One of the main reasons why people, especially young teenagers, prefer to use emoji is that it makes them appear competent and friendlier. To sustain a healthy online presence and high traffic to a social media site, account holders have to look more approachable by using emoticons. Lastly, the users can correlate the positive emotional feelings derived from emoticons with real-life happiness and emotional satisfaction. Often, users experience personal interaction, perceived usefulness, enjoyment, and a perceived information richness.

Nonetheless, Emoji does not allow the building of its units from parts. The users cannot create an original icon for use, but are forced to use another individual’s creation to pass across a personal message. The agent-action pattern indicates a lack of flexibility, especially in the need for natural expression of the message without an artificial awkward sequencing. The limitation that forces people to disseminate information in a unit-to-unit string limits the level of expressional complexity. In natural and normal drawings, artists can do this easily.

In summary, it is clear that emoji is gradually replacing texts as a form of communication in social media platform (Halvorsen 694). Some of the factors that contribute to this phenomenon include the desire for people to express their emotions clearly without textual limitations. In addition, readers relate naturally with images much easier in comparison to words. Besides, the advancement of technology prompts younger generation to device ingenious plans to maximize the benefits and to boost their communication skills. In spite of all these benefits, emoji still has a long way to go before it can become a universal language where people can hold conversations freely and completely.

Works Cited

Albert H. Huang, David C. Yen & Xiaoni Zhang. "Exploring the Potential Effects of Emoticons." Information & Management (2008): 466-473. Pdf. Retrieved from         doi:10.1016/j.im.2008.07.001

Halvorsen, Andy. "Patterns of Emoticon Usage in ESL Students' Discussion Forum Writing." CALICO Journal 29.4 (2012): 694-717.

Harris, James Edward. The Use of Emojis with Adolescents in the Therapeutic Context. Diss. Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2016.

Jarc, James T. Parlance, Perception, and Power: An Inquiry into Non-Standard Language Use in Digital Media. Diss. Gonzaga University, 2015.

Kelly, Caroline. “Do you know what I mean?:  A Linguistic Study of the Understanding of Emoticons and Emoji in Text Messages." Bachelor Thesis (2015): 14-20.

Leticia Vidala, GastónAresa& Sara R. Jaegerb. "Use of Emoticon and Emoji in Tweets for Food-Related Emotional Expression." Food Quality and Preference (2016): 119–128.

Smith, Kirsten, A. "Assessing the Supportiveness of Gift Emoticons in Care Scenarios." ACM (2015): 151-156.

Suhay, Lisa. Adidas Use of Emoji to Handle Hate is Positively Biblical. 18 February 2016. 14 June 2016. Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2016/0218/Adidas-use-of-emoji-to-handle-hate-is-positively-biblical