The Emoji Code by Vyvyan Evans

Author:Vyvyan Evans [Evans, Vyvyan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books

CHAPTER 5

Colourful Writing

Predictive typing has long been a staple of smartphones, and even mobile phones back in the day before they were smart. It works by figuring out for us the words we want to type, based on word initial-letter combinations, and by adapting to an individual’s typing habits; predictive text software ‘learns’ what the phone user most often says, in order to predict what might be coming next. But in 2016, Apple made headlines when it introduced predictive emoji to its operating system update. For the first time, and without having to download an app, owners of iPads and iPhones were able to replace words with emojis when composing an email or message. It works by suggesting an emoji alternative to a word, and also highlights words that can be replaced with an emoji, as a user types (see Figure 16 in the picture section).

And that’s not all. The emojis themselves were also supersized, the glyphs having increased threefold in size, when used alone. While this means larger love hearts and winks, to better express our emotional selves, the key advantage is that the detail of the pictogram shines through: now you can clearly see the difference between, say, the relieved face and the smiling face. But the emojis shrink back to their original size when used alongside text, to make possible mixed-modality messages – language and Emoji.

With this move, Emoji was elevated in terms of credentials and significance, empowered as a sort of universal, electronic alphabet that we can use to help us create, adorn and pepper our written messages. With this in mind, Joanna Stern, a journalist for the otherwise strait-laced Wall Street Journal, raised eyebrows when she attempted to write an article in Emoji (see Figure 15 in the picture section).

We saw in Chapter 1 that deciphering the meaning of emoji ‘sentences’ is no mean feat. And this follows because, as we have seen, Emoji is not a true language: it lacks the grammar and vocabulary required to avoid the sort of ambiguity that arises when we put two emojis next to each other. To show you what I mean, take the last two emojis of the first sentence in Figure 15: a thumbs-up and a video recorder. This sequence of emojis could mean: ‘I would like a video recorder’, ‘video recorders are good/useful’, or indeed something else. But in fact, here, the author means it to convey this: ‘good at expressing oneself in video form’.

While a writing system reflects and represents a spoken language, Emoji is a colourful addition to our writing systems, providing a sort of enhanced alphabet for the digital age. In her essay, Joanna Stern explains how, as she grappled with this new colourful writing, she realised that ‘even to just supplement text with emoji, you need to adjust your brain to think visually: how to communicate in cartoon’.133

And this gets to the heart of the matter. Writing forms do develop and evolve, in response to our changing needs. While language itself

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.