Emojis are cool
I use a lot of emojis when I write (especially chat), and it has always struck me as interesting that most people around me don’t. “Don’t they want to convey how they feel about this?” I ask myself. So much so that, for a long time, I thought my overuse of emojis came from a needy, co-dependent part of me that wanted to be pleasant to others and avoid any misunderstandings by being extra clear that I wasn’t angry or displeased with them through the use of the smiley face.
It wasn’t until quite recently that I realized my use of emojis was not “a weak front” (as is usually viewed by the professional and academic worlds), though it is neither a strength. What is it then? Well, it’s just an extra set of punctuation marks.
Emojis have drastically evolved since their first (genius) inception and introduction in the early 80s. At first, I imagine they were thought of more as just cute pictures to add weight to your messages—more like signs than actual grammatical elements. But at some point (and I guess this is quite recent), they adopted a whole new power and significance and started to be used as an extension of punctuation marks, as stress markers, emotion markers.
Once you have that extra power of expressibility, it’s hard to go back, hard not to use it. This is, I think, especially true for those of us who grew up in the era of instant messaging, especially around the 2000s when Microsoft Messenger was the only option and there were no established rules regarding what this new form of communication looked like.
The fact that it was real-time chatting meant you needed to maximize the amount of meaning you could convey per second. As our teenage selves spent the night chatting and bathing in the cathode rays of our screens, we saw emojis and abbreviations (idk, IIRC, brb, etc.) organically emerge and be tested by everyone. If they were useful, they were kept; if not, they were discarded or replaced. A giant network, chattering with each other and in so doing coming up with a new way of using language.
This shorter, faster format meant that 1) there was a larger probability of miscommunication, so emojis could help clarify your stance on a topic, and 2) they could themselves be used instead of words (❤️ instead of love, etc.). I think the first point was by far the most important (the second could already be solved by acronyms, often better).
Now, fast forward to 2024. We have other, faster chat formats like Twitch chat and massive Discord rooms, both of which see extensive use of abbreviations and emojis.
There’s something that abbreviations don’t provide, and you only get from emojis: emotion. Annotating your emotion in what you write is extremely powerful and expressive, especially if the text in question is short and with sparse context (again, chat messages). Take, for example:
- “We never say anything unless it’s worth taking a long time to say it. 🍵”
- “We never say anything unless it’s worth taking a long time to say it. 😡”
The first is clearly a calm reflection, while the second is someone trying to force their beliefs on you.
If you’re like me, then you can certainly feel how differently you react to the two above sentences. Even if the text is the same, the perceived intent and state of the speaker are completely different. Once you recognize this, how do you avoid clarifying your position by employing the correct emoji?
Sure, oftentimes the emotion and intent are clear, and there’s no clarification needed. Still, I find myself adding an emoji just because it “feels right.” I guess once you form the habit, it becomes hard to break it, like when you see an the trick of an illusion. It’s then hard to unsee it.
Well, that was a long way to say a simple thing. Could I have made it shorter? Yeah, of course—possibly it could’ve been a paragraph or two, but
You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.
Finally, I wanted to point out a really cool use of emojis as a pictorial writing system for the constructed language Toki Pona (of which I’m a huge fan). Granted, this is a bit of cheating because each emoji stands for a pre-agreed-upon Toki Pona word. Still, the fact that this is possible shows you the enormous amount of semantic meaning that emojis have as a whole.
👍↪️👉 (pona tawa sina: peace be with you)