As soon as cell phones became popular and text-slang emerged, many people worried about the existing English language. Text-slang was blamed for the deterioration of students’ abilities to read, write, and speak correctly.
Now, we are faced with a similar issue, this time with the emergence of emojis. Emojis have been around for a while, slowly becoming integrated into our online community. Now, they are popular and are part of almost any sentence that you will read on most social media platforms.
Just as there were critics of the text-slang, there are critics of emojis. Once again, emojis are seen by many people to be damaging to the English language. However, I see emojis as an extension of the English language.
In fact, since emojis are actually pictures, rather than words, they are extensions of all the languages in the world. Emojis are pictures, not words. They were originally invented in Japan by cellphone companies as a method for sending pictograph images to each other through cell phones.
This original basis of making emojis for image communication is why I see emojis as an extension of every language. An effective form of communication that has survived throughtout the centuries, from cave paintings to today’s emojis, is visual communication.
Through visuals and pictures, any person from any culture who speaks any language can usually understand what message is being conveyed through visual symbols. Emojis are merely an extension of the languages we have today, because we have evolved past simple communication like cave paintings.
However, with the easy access we have to different people around the world online, emojis can come in handy for communicating with people that speak different languages. As for emojis, the English language, and everyday life, emojis enhance our language every day.
Emojis became popular in America when Apple officially recognized them and created an emoji keyboard and since then, almost every text, tweet, and Instagram caption includes an emoji. Emojis help set the tones of these messages-something we easily lose when it comes to online or cell phone communication.
It is hard to know the tone of a message when all you are reading is words. Are they joking? Are they mad? With emojis, these messages become clearer. If I want to send a sarcastic text but want the receiver to be sure to know that it is really a joke and that I am not being mean, I will be sure to add the laughing-crying emoji.
Then the receiver will know that I am only joking. Without the emoji, they may think that I am actually being rude and my message therefore will have been misinterpreted. In life, because we come across so many different people of different cultures who speak different languages, our messages can become misunderstood, especially online.
With emojis, our messages become a little less confusing than before.
Jill Augustine
Deputy Viewpoints Editor
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