Emojis have entered electronic communications throughout the world like a fresh gust of wind. I'm sure I won't do justice to their symbolism in this, my first attempt, at addressing their impact. I undertook a degree in Communications Studies, which focused greatly on semiotics in all forms of media. Before my degree I couldn't have told you the meaning of 'semiotics' or 'semiology'. In fact, I thought it must have had something to do with pathology, honestly, I did.
Let me bore you with a definition of Semiotics from www.brittanica.com:
"Semiotics, also called semiology, the study of signs and sign-using behaviour. … Saussure treated language as a sign-system, and his work in linguistics supplied the concepts and methods that semioticians applied to sign-systems other than language."
But I wasn't as stupid as I thought for there is also medical semiology. A definition I found on pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov goes:
"Medical semiology comprises the study of symptoms, somatic signs and laboratory signs, history taking and physical examination."
Signs actually play a very important role in our lives. Language itself is a sign system and non-language signs, from expressions, to gestures, to the underlying meanings given to colours, all expand our way of communicating with others.
During my degree I studied the role of signs of all kinds used in advertising, from that in print to broadcast on television. Colours, and the meanings we associate with them, play a big role in how advertisers construct their copy. Blue has a lot of connotations ranging from sadness to porn. Red is for excitement, heat and the forbidden. "He's yellow" - a coward; "she's green with envy"; "he looks really black" - angry, upset.
As students we were given print advertisements and asked to assess how the visual background and elements of a photo or picture supported the text.
I have come to feel that emojis are a really valid form of expression. They are something to be used in addition to language but can also take its place. Emojis are just what they are named for: a means of expressing emotion. They are somehow friendlier than mere words and I think that the reason for this is that we associate pictures, and communication using them, as relating to childhood. There's something sweet and innocent about them. To use the words 'I love you' in a missive can bear too much weight. You can send a platonic friend a 💓 for instance and not have them fearing you have developed a passion for them.
With emoji faces you can express so much with the expression you choose. Not only that, but they also tend to make us laugh. For those of us who are older, they also bring out the kid in us. For someone like me, in her late sixties 😱, it gives my communications a whole new sense of fun. (And, yes, the horror emoji more than adequately expresses what it's like to be a young person who finds themselves in an old body. When the heck did that happen?)
The internet was born in the 'nineties but really came into its own after the millennium. The children of today will never know what it was like to be without it. In a way it really is magic and has given rise to many new careers and possibilities that didn't exist before. I watch my five- and eight-year-old grandchildren on their iPads and know that they must become adept in the use of computer technology. The eight-year-old needs his for school, as do his fellow students. Their homework also includes Mathletics on the iPad. At their age they take to it like a duck to water, just as they learn language so quickly when they are young.
The five-year-old girl uses an app on hers to put make up on a panda or some fantasy creature, but she can flick through apps like a pro and find what she's after. At her age having an iPad may seem a bit much, but older brother had one and there would have been a battle if she didn't. Besides, it is amazing to watch how quickly she became adept at using it. What really amazed me most was the two-year-old grandchild trying to operate the television remote the other day and refusing all help. It wasn't just for the television; it was a box that connected to Netflix or something, but he persisted and studied the screen trying to choose a program. He didn't succeed but he tried.
The older two grandchildren try to do awful, and sometimes beautiful things, to my face using Snapchat. These days I need improvement but, at worst, I end up looking funny. I even wonder if I get more of a thrill acting like a kid and using emojis than they do. When new things come into the world as you're becoming a bit jaded, having been born in an age of television, phones, cars and all the mod cons, and then something new, refreshing and only dreamed of, like mobile phones and the not even imagined internet, comes along, it does make you feel young again.
🤸🏼♀️
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