Task 6: An emoji story

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Reflection

In completing this task, I was reminded of Kress’ (2005) description of the affordances of words versus images, and wondered what — to use Kress’ term — “gains and losses” have come about with the remediation of emojis. Specifically:

• • In 2005, Kress noted that “there is a finite stock of words—vague, general, nearly empty of meaning; on the other hand there is an infinitely large potential of depictions—precise, specific, and full of meaning” (p. 15). And now, in 2022, we have emojis, which I might consider a cross between words and image depictions. Interestingly, there is a finite number of emojis, a fact that was particularly clear to me as I was completing the activity above, and they have the potential to convey specific meanings of which the writer may not even be aware.
  • Expanding on my last point, Bolter (2010) argued that “speakers of different languages could share the same system of picture writing” (Bolter, 2010, p. 59). However, as McCulloch (2019) warned in regards to emojis, “what [a person] interpret[s] a symbol as depends on [their] cultural context … [their] linguistic context … [and] the rest of [their] experience” (Zaltzman & McCulloch, 2019). In other words, the “additional meanings” conveyed by the emojis “can’t be universal” (Zaltzman & McCulloch, 2019).
  • In addition, as the understanding of the connotations of emojis evolve over generations (Abdullahi, 2021; Sanjay, 2020), I wonder to what extent emojis could be interpreted as the writer intended, especially over time. How would a millennial today interpret my emoji story? How would a Gen Z or Gen X today interpret my emoji story? How would an audience 10 years from now interpret my emoji story?

Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas, or a combination of all of them?

I relied mostly on ideas. In addition to my thoughts above on the connotations and interpretations of emojis, I also realize now that I conveyed my ideas in consideration of the subject, order, and time:

• • Subject: I started numerous lines with the emoji of the male character, where, aligning with Kress’ (2005) point, “[b]eing first … mean[s] being first in the speaker’s attention (the theme of a sentence) … or being cause of an action” (Kress, 2005, p. 12).
  • Order: I used left-to-right sequencing, just like Boroditsky’s example of the Nestlé nutritional supplement (SAR School for Advanced Research, 2017). I then followed this with top-to-bottom sequencing. I believe I subconsciously made this decision because my emoji story was created by an English-speaking writer (me) and intended for an English-speaking audience.
  • Time: The passage of time, while not explicitly stated, was implied through this sequencing.

Did you start with the title? Why? Why not?

I did start with the title, but this was not an intentional decision. I would say I started with the title simply because I’m used to starting written pieces with the title, just like how this blog post starts with “Task 6: An emoji story”. I wonder if there are languages where it is not the norm to start written pieces with the title, and how that might influence their approach if they were asked to complete this task.

Did you choose the work based on how easy it would be to visualize?

Admittedly, I did! I originally wanted to do Stranger Things since I just finished volume 1 of season 4, but I couldn’t figure out a clear way to depict “Stranger” or “Things” or most of the plot in the show. This goes back to my earlier point about the finite number of emojis — my ability to tell stories was limited by the emojis currently available. Similarly, I imagine my use of text for this post may be limited by the words available, where these words influence my thinking and in turn limit my thoughts.

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References

Abdullahi, T. (2021, March 15). What do emojis mean? How millennials and Gen-Z use them very differently. The National. https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/what-do-emojis-mean-how-millennials-and-gen-z-use-them-very-differently-1.1183746

Bolter, J. D. (2010). The breakout of the visual. In Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (pp. 47-76). Routledge.

Kress, G. (2005). Gains and losses: New forms of text, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 22(1), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2004.12.004

Sanjay, S. (2020, October 1). Why does Gen Z use emojis to weirdly? Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kpngb/gen-z-young-people-use-emojis-differently-than-millennials

SAR School for Advanced Research. (2017, June 7). Lera Boroditsky, How the languages we speak shape the ways we think [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGuuHwbuQOg

Zaltzman, H., & McCulloch, G. (2019). 102. New rules [Audio podcast episode]. In The Allusionist. https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/new-rules