Impact of Emoji
Emoji have impacted how people communicate using CMC. It has allowed for massaging within platforms “to be more interactive and positively humanized” (Gn, 2018). They provide information, change the tone of a speaker, help to manage conversations, engage with recipients, reduce distance and formality, and maintain relationships (Boyle & Carmichael, 2019, p.182). This is accomplished as emoji are “ideographic and logographic vernaculars that are primarily designed to inform the receiver of the sender’s intent or emotional state” (Gn, 2018). Boyle and Carmichael (2019) found that emoji positively impact relationships due to the fact that they do as Gn said; emoji inform recipients of emotion and clarify meaning that can be lost if there are no non-verbal cues. Informing recipients of the emotional context of a message can help to support, understand, and validate what is being said. In this sense, emoji helps to support the meaning of text.
Emoji can also be a substitute for text which is why some argue that it is the start of a universal language. Pictures can cross language barriers and language limitations. Emoji are particular adept at this due to the fact that they are created by “an international process of technical standardization” (Berdard, 2018). Part of the standardization process has been the creation of an emoji dictionary, Emojipedia (https://emojipedia.org/), which provides definitions for emoji. Individuals use emoji as a substitute for text in personal communications; Katie Perry’s emoji edition of her “Roar” video provides multiple examples of how this is done. Emoji are being used as text substitutions in larger projects as well, for example, “Emoji Dick”, a retelling of “Moby Dick”.
Emoji can be used in more serious application of text substitution. For example, Adami and Cecchini’s propose emoji-based instructions for AED machines. Adami and Cecchini believe that when emoji are applied to these types of situations that they “contribute to the development of a civic engagement culture and positive action toward the community” (2019, p.32).
(Adami and Cecchini, 2009, p.32)
Jenna Schilstra (2016) in her TED talk “In Defence of Emojis” provides additional applications for emoji in areas like counselling for children and aiding communication for people on the autism spectrum. Fane et al. discuss how emoji can be used to help facilitate research with children as emoji“offered a vehicle for limiting adult input and bias about children’s experiences and understandings of feelings and feeling well, providing opportunities for young children to express their understanding and interpretations of feelings or everyday objects or events” (Fane et al., 2018, p.372).
Emoji can also been used to communicate ideas that may otherwise be censored; Gn (2018) uses an example by Yam in to highlight this idea:
“(🍚🐰) would likely have little logographic impact in English, but its combined pronunciation in Mandarin (mitu) has transformed it into an effective visual pun for users in China to support the #MeToo movement and evade state censorship.”
In this sense, emoji were used as a tool for speech acts. Emoji may be known as cute visual representations but they have the power to transform conversations and lives.