Emoji

From DigitalRhetoricCollaborative

Revision as of 12:44, 1 December 2015

Sample of Emojis [1]

An emoji is a pictorial character used to communicate objects, ideas and emotions. The word “emoji” derives from the Japanese word for picture (e) and the word for emotion (moji). Emojis are the offspring of emoticons which seek to express emotion in textual settings. The emoji first appeared in Japan in the late 1990s and have since spread across the world. The icons are separated amongst different categories and occasions specific to Japanese culture and each character “has an official named, defined as part of the Unicode standard”. Unicode is “a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems” ^[1].

History/Origins

Different Variations of Emojis [2]

Emojis are the descendants of the emoticon. The emoticon was born in 1982 out of the need to minimize digital miscommunications. Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon found it difficult for their jokes to translate in online discussion boards, so research professor Scott Fahlman suggested sarcastic messages be labeled with :-). Soon, other faces emerged to show other emotions: :-(, ;-), XD, etc. [3]. In 1999 The Japanese wireless mobile company, NTT DoKoMo, was the first to discover the technology behind the emoji and how to relay the message in a single character. Shigetaka Kurita figured these symbols could be applied to the rising use of mobile messaging and email amongst teenagers. Docomo first introduced the heart symbol as a way for teenagers to incorporate sentiment into their texts. In its written form, the Japanese language loses much of the emotional resonance that exists through vocal cues. The emoji puts the emotion back in communication [4]. The emoji discovery made character limits more manageable. The initial set of characters included 172 emoji icons created to simplify multimedia messaging and contribute additional features to electronic communication.^[2]

In 2011, Apple’s iOS operating system released the Apple Color Emoji keyboard. Other companies, such as Android, also adopted the emoji phenomenon after the increasingly wide popularity. Microsoft further expanded the use of emoji with the addition of monochrome Unicode emoji coverage to the Segoe UI Symbol system font in Windows 8 with color later added in Windows 8.1. ^[3]

Developments

New Emojis are frequently released alongside new software. Users wishing to obtain these new icons simply must update their cell phones to have them automatically downloaded to their devices. Though computers do not have an Emoji keyboard like cell phones do, Emojis can be viewed on a computer. Notably the release of iOS 8.3 in April 2015 brought both racially diverse and LGBT Emojis to users for the first time. Emojis had previously only featured white characters and had very little LGBT options. [5]. Apple released iOS 9.1 in September 2015 which features a middle finger emoji along with 150 other new characters. [6]. Though Emoji updates typically accompany Apple iOS software, they are compatible with Microsoft Windows, Android and Chrome as well.

Emoji's rise in popularity has led to an abundance of applications that users can download to receive “extra” Emojis. Though these function similarly to regular Emojis, they are technically not a part of the brand and thus must be downloaded separately. An example of this is the Star Wars app which users can download to access Emojis from the popular film series. [7] Another one is the LifeStyles Condoms keyboard which was introduced in November 2015 where users can access condoms, lingerie and other sexually charged icons. [8] Popular sports teams have also released similar keyboards featuring the faces of players. The Atlanta Hawks were the first professional sports team to release a custom Emoji keyboard and other teams have followed suit. [9]

The popularity of Emojis has led to a phenomenon called "Emojinalysis" which is the belief that recently used Emojis can reveal information about a person's emotional state. Dan Brill who is a copyrighter who lives in New York created a blog called "Emojinalysis"[10] where visitors can submit a screenshot of their recently used Emojis to receive a "diagnosis" of their emotional health.[11]

Multimodality

Multimodality is a communication practice through visual, spatial, linguistic, gestural and aural forms to create a message. Emojis allow communicators to visually create a message through depictions of people, places and objects. Emojis are a modern text in that they have not been a longstanding, traditional form of communication. Writing is moving towards images, as seen with the emoji. In Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects, Kristin Arola, Jennifer Sheppard and Cheryl Ball argue that "Together, the many modes that make up texts are useful in different situations. Multimodality gives writers additional tools for designing effective texts" (19). Writers and designers who use emoji create effective messages, perhaps emotional or sentimental, through visual representations.

Contextual Analysis

Rhetorical Effects

Despite only becoming standard to software in 2011, Emojis have become a staple in the realm of technological communication. A 2015 study conducted by a marketing group called Emogi found that 92% of online users utilize Emojis. This same study found that 63.9% of people said they use Emojis several times a week or more. Only 7.6% of people included in this study claimed that they only use Emoji's once a year or less. This Emoji phenomenon has led some companies to adopt "Emoji friendly advertising." International House of Pancakes (IHOP) has recently changed their logo to resemble an Emoji. Similarly, Burger King created an Emoji to promote their chicken fries. [12]

In 2015, 😂was named Word of the Year by the Oxford Dictionary. It was chosen because it "best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015." It is the first pictograph to win. The rise in Emoji use increased largely from 2014 to 2015, deeming it an appropriate choice for the year's word. [13]

External Links

• Emojipedia
• Emoji Wikipedia
• Apple's Emoji Characters Will Soon Look More Like the World
• UTR #51: Unicode Emoji
• {http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/emojis-rapid-evolution.html Smile, You're Speaking Emoji] by Adam Sternbergh
• [14]
• [15]
• [16]
• [17]
• [18]
• [19]
• [20]
• [21]
• [22]
• [23]
• [24]

Print Sources

• Arola, Kristin L., Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball. Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. Print.