Task 6 | Emoji Story

• 3 years ago
• Posted in:Weekly Tasks
• 3
• Author: marwa kotb

Introduction

Bolter (2001) outlined “we are living in a visual culture” (p.29). Since the advent of photography, followed by film and television, and now digital mobile technologies, visuals have transcended to challenge text as the dominant mode of communication (Bolter, 2001). These statements are agreed upon, a fact of our life, you may say. Our environment is saturated with visuals; millions of images are carried in our pockets, accessed by the touch of a button. Moreover, we are immersed in numerous symbolic representations (e.g., icons) that we deem as extensions of the writing systems, however, using images rather than words (Bolter, 2001). Emojis, the focus of this task, have become increasingly popular in text-based communication (such as email and instant messaging) as a quick fix to “the problem of decontextualization” (Bolter, 2001, p.); we attach them to utterances to mark our intentions and tones (Bolter, 2001). For example, writing “I love coding” with a smiling face is likely to evoke a more positive interpretation than writing “I love coding ” which may be intended to convey the opposite.

Despite the sense of familiarity with emojis, I was dubious about using emojis to convey a clear message. I questioned: “Why do I lack the belief that emojis can convey the meaning of my story? Where do the doubts I sense come from?” Perhaps it is personal; I don’t use most emojis or know what they mean. My rationality replied: “It is simple; type in a word to find the emoji you need.” I picked up my cell phone and experimented composing movie titles with emojis. Here are challenges in the emoji story coming upfront. There is no emoji for exact words; the creation process (to tell the story) would be limited with the finite availability of emojis; there would be a higher probability of misinterpretation due to the apparent indirectness. Additionally, I thought that the viewers would need to be familiar with the story and its symbols to be able to make meaning from the visuals. I decided to examine my assumptions and see where they would take me. I composed a list of titles for five of my favourite old movies in emojis and shared them with my youngest daughter (see the figure below). The attempt was not successful as you may understand from the snapshot. However, it uncovered a new angle that I haven’t considered before; while using emojis, composing and deciphering would primarily depend on the author and the viewer’s knowledge, culture, and experience. For instance, my daughter pointed out that the emojis I used to indicate “pray” in movie[5] seemed like someone doing yoga.

Kress (2005) argued that words are “vague” descriptions. In contrast, images are “specific depictions” that “are full of meaning” (p.15). In a similar vein, Stuart Ewen’s (1988) stated, “[images] speak to the universal language of the eye” (p.156). However, experimenting with my daughter made me rethink the nature of emojis, I realized that emojis aren’t the images that Kress (2005) or Ewen (1998) described in their materials. They do not offer a “Unicode” of communication or a standardized/defined meaning to people (Rawlings, 2018, December 11). The symbols are ambiguous; they offer different interpretations for different cultures, ages, and spoken languages (Rawlings, 2018, December 11). Such variance adds further complexity to this task.

The Emoji Story

I chose to represent my favourite TV show of all time. The main reason for my choice was not the popularity of the show or that it would be easy for the audience to visualize. Instead, I chose this show because I am intimately familiar with all its details and characters. I watched this show many times, so I can’t remember the exact number of views. The last time I did was recently during the holidays with my daughters, so it refreshed my mind.

I composed three sections in my emoji story, I marked each by a sign and colon to indicate what each constitute. The sections are: The title, the main characters and their descriptions, and the scenes of a certain episode. Starting with a title is a logical process and a common convention in any media production (movies, TV shows, or books). The viewer would assume that the first line of the story is the title and would take their chances to guess the show without even going through the content. Unlike “The Wedding Date” and “Blade Runner”, the story’s title was not as easy to translate as I anticipated, I took a while with it until I settled on the one in the story.

Following that, I hand-drafted a small diagram, specifying the main characters and their descriptions. I used this guide to compose the second section of my emoji story. I arranged this section into groupings of characters and revealed the connections between them. The arrangement of the section follows the conventions of writing to some extent. I added the group emoji (i.e., the subtitle), lines of emojis describing members of the group and their connections (i.e., sentences) and space between groups to indicate the end of a paragraph and the beginning of a new group (i.e., subtitle). I tried to select the emoji characters that adhered most to the looks of the real characters in the show. However, despite the significant efforts for more inclusive representations in the emoji design that I personally noticed, the resemblance wasn’t accurate for the characters and groupings, and the choice was again constrained by the availability of emojis. For instance, I failed to find a grouping of five; I worked around that by attaching two emojis each time I refer to this grouping. In this section, I attempt to use syllables to reveal the name of one of the characters in her description, however, I discarded the idea as I thought it might bewilder the audience rather than help them, it was also difficult to interpret the name as it is a mix of two different languages.

For the last section, I didn’t reveal the episode I chose, but I gave an indication for the viewer through the title of this section. I summarized the plot using bulleted points and turned the itemized list into the lines of emojis. The sequence of events in this section follows the progression of scenes in the episode; coinciding with Bolter’s (2001) claim, “[picture writing] seems to reproduce places and events directly” ( p. 33). 

Generally speaking, I relied on a combination of words and ideas to tell the story. I used arrows and other symbols (e.g.,+ sign) to illustrate verbs, reactions, and connections. I employed the heart, emoji faces, and cross sign (X) multiple times to communicate characteristics and emotions among characters.

Final Thoughts

Although, I found that emojis on their own were deficient in telling compelling stories. This task made me realize that images contain layers of meaning including their social and cultural references. The way we refer to images need to correspond to the context in which they are used and displayed. In this stance, emojis haven’t been designed to replace written text and incapable of telling visual stories. However, a combination of the two modes (text + emojis) “may achieve greater immediacy and authenticity” as claimed in Bolter (2001). In the educational sector, educators may consider the multimodal text as new ways of these modes working together in powerful ways. One particular resource that I have in mind is “Why I use emoji in research and teaching“, Fane (2017) suggests that emojis are extremely useful tools for children to communicate their learning. I acknowledge, however, that this is a complex issue that warrants further research and analysis.

References:

• Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410600110
• Ewen, S. (1988). All consuming images: The politics of style in contemporary culture. Basic Books.
• Fane, J. (2017). Why I use emoji in research and teaching. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/why-i-use-emoji-in-research-and-teaching-75399
• Kress (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22
• Rawlings, A. (2018, December 11). Why emoji mean different things in different cultures. BBC Future. Retrieved from Why emoji mean different things in different cultures – BBC Future