Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas or a combination of all of them?
I found myself relying more on replacing words with emojis/images. This reminds me of Boroditsky’s (2011) argument that our language shapes the way we think. In this sense, language affected the way in which I produced images to explain my ideas. In a sense, my words became pictorials or “reverse ekphrasis’ where my words became pictures (Bolter, 2001). I was also tempted to add words to explain the images, similar to Bolter’s (2001) explanation of scholarly journals that words control the images or text supervises images and its reading and how during the Renaissance, written or printed words were in control. I also agree with Prior (2005) that images are also sequential. I inputed the images as I would say them in the same sequence as words. It is also interesting to note that this blog space couldn’t reproduce the emojis as I enter them. Rather, it appeared as question marks as if this blog space couldn’t understand the input. This reminds me of Prior’s (2005) analysis of Kress’ affordances of words and images in that this blog space may not value the use of emojis or that it may see words as in control and of more importance (Bolter, 2001). In creating my Emoji Story, it reminded me of our dictation assignment, in that I did not include punctuations except spacing out the title from the plot description to signify a start of a new idea.
Did you start with the title? Why? Why not?
Typically, when writing in Canada (such as assignments where we start with title page), we begin with the title before we explain the plot of a story or movie. So by habit or allowing my language to shape my thought (Boroditsky, 2011), I also started with the title before explaining the plot.
Did you choose the work based on how easy would it be to visualize?
I had to debate which emoji to use to explain my show because I had to contemplate if I was going to make it so that those who saw the show would be able to guess or that the images are easily translated even if the person was not familiar with the television show. In this way, I was hoping that even though two readers may interpret the images differently (Bolter, 2001), it was still fairly close to the intended message. I chose the work based on how much I could help my audience visualize my idea. I feel that I prefer the formation of a mental image for my audience only because I too am rolling films of ideas when I am trying to decipher codes (Bolter, 2001). Mentally, I have slides of possibilities and I flip through them mentally until I decide which I feel fits best.
In doing the Emoji story, I am reminded of Picture Exchange Communication, where students who are non-verbal can use pictures to communicate with us and how technology has afforded that these pictures can become words to tell us what the students are saying, thinking or want. This tells me that affordances of words or images are contextual and depends on intent and desires (Prior, 2005).
References:
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110
Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.
Prior, P. (2005). Moving multimodality beyond the binaries: A response to Gunther Kress’ “Gains and Losses.” Computers and Compositions, 22, 23-30.