The Development of Emojis and the Implications for Literacy and Education
Katie Muzyka
MET, University of British Columbia
ETEC 540 66B Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing
Dr. Ernesto Peña
August 11th, 2022
Emojis are commonly used in less formal communication via text and social media platforms. As an image-based means of communication it has the benefit of readily communicating emotions in a way that is more universal than other forms of language. Although emojis share many characteristics of a language, their use is not formally taught and an understanding of emojis is built up over time through interacting with others in digital spaces, which immediately differentiates it from most commonly used means of communication. They have increasingly been used for surveying populations, enhancing online multimodal communication, and for transcending language or literacy barriers.
Development of Emojis and their Cultural Context
As digital means of communication became more common, emoticons, key strokes meant to simulate the appearance of facial expressions or other indicators of emotion came into usage in the 1980s. They functioned as a way to clarify emotion in online communication and were a precursor to emojis, although emoticons continue to be used today. Emojis were created in “the late 1990s by NTT DoCoMo, the Japanese communications firm” (Hern, 2015) as pictures that could be used to supplement or enhance written text online. Today, emojis are “encoded and supported through Unicode Consortium” (Gray & Holmes, 2020), that has voting members, mostly western technology companies, that decided on new emojis to add to the existing collection. They do however accept applications for new emojis from the general public and typically try to add new emojis that fill cultural gaps and respond to popular demand while maintaining “universal cross-platform communication” (Gray & Holmes, 2020).
An emoji is composed of two distinct parts, the underlying form of the emoji, as determined by Unicode, and the glyph, which is the picture that appears on a specific device (Gray & Holmes, 2020). Glyphs differ depending on the platform being used and the company that made the device. Although they all adhere to the general meaning of the emoji as determined by Unicode, the differences in the glyphs from one platform to another can serve to slightly alter the connotations of emojis when being viewed from different platforms. Emojis continue to evolve, not just through new additions approved by Unicode, but also through the different artistic interpretations of each emoji as presented by various tech companies and digital platforms.
Although emojis are still being used to represent emotions or clarify the tone of digital messages, their usage has expanded along with the repertoire of emojis to include other functions. In digital communication they are currently used to replace words but also to reflect them and certain emojis have emerge to represent specific social movements and hashtags. Bhattacharya (2019) asserts that “Apart from being linked with human emotions, Emojis, images, and icons can also be developed or tailor-made to appeal to the cultural norms prevalent in a society.”
Use of emojis is strongly influenced by age, gender, digital platform and nationality. Emojis are typically used more by women than by men and are often thought of as a communication tool of younger generations. On some platforms , like WhatsApp, older generations are found to have a very similar rate of emoji usage as younger people (Koch et al., 2022). Because their use was initially strongly associated with teen culture they continue to be used primarily in informal communication.
The Evolution of Emojis
The advent of the internet was the catalyst for creating conditions that necessitated the invention of emojis to fill in gaps in digital communication. With an increasing number of people depending on digital means for communication, emoticons and later emojis entered digital communication as a way of clearly expressing tone and emotion that could be difficult to communicate by text or in chat rooms. Typically use of emojis and other visual means of communication continue to be used primarily “in chats or on social media”(Bhattacharya et al., 2019) , rather than in more formal communication.
There is some debate about wether emojis are a new creation that has been implemented to fill certain gaps in digital communication, or wether it can be considered the newest version of a tradition of symbolic picture-based languages from much earlier in human history such as pre-historic cave paintings, hieroglyphics and cuneiform writing (Alshenqeeti, 2016). Authors that predate the invention of emojis such as Lewis Carrol and Leonardo DaVinci also used pictograms in much the same way that emojis are used today to enhance the meaning of written text, and add creative expression to their work (Alshenqeeti, 2016).
Unsurprisingly, as emojis began as a communication tool that was more suited to western norms, inhabitants of western countries tend to use more emojis than do people in other parts of the world (Koch et al., 2021). Often seen as a fairly universal visual means of communication, it is important to remember that the meaning of emojis is shaped by cultural context and that meaning can differ depending on the part of the world in which they are used. Gray & Holmes (2020) state that: “the use of specific emojis by digital writers—like any form of rhetoric in any medium—depends upon cultural context, rhetorical purpose, and audience.” They give one particularly striking example of this by comparing how the hand wave emoji is interpreted in most of the world as meaning hello/goodbye vs. how it is commonly used on the Chinese social media platform Weibo to indicate ending a friendship.
Emojis are changing to reflect aspects of different cultures, and groups like Emojination regularly submit proposals to Unicode to have emojis added to the existing repertoire of images (Gray & Holmes, 2020). They try to encourage “culturally-inclusive emoji” that represent a wider variety of food, cultural items and clothing. This is a departure from tech companies having sole input on which emojis are added. Although these additions do not necessarily increase the ability of emojis to be more universally understood, they allow for different cultures and religions to be reflected in this universal visual language. Emojis continue to grow and evolve from year to year, much like any other language and become more adapted to specific purposes and the communities using them.
Benefits of Emojis
The primary need that emojis address is that of reducing barriers to communication in an increasingly interconnected global community. Emojis are especially useful in breaking down “barriers of languages. Meanings of symbols are easily understood across the globe.” (Bhattacharya et al., 2019) By using emojis to facilitate basic communication, they can encourage connections between people and reduce barriers to access in contexts like healthcare education (Bhattacharya et al., 2019).
Alshenqeeti (2016) asserts that emojis are actually “expanding linguistic ability” by adding a creative visual element that enhances the meaning of the text it is paired with. Additionally, emojis can act as a bridge for understanding where literacy in the target language is not yet present. Although the understanding of certain emojis can differ from country to country, as previously mentioned, most emoji communication has a universal visual quality that promotes understanding regardless of the language spoken by the person reading it.
Emojis and their Impact on Literacy
Some feel that emojis are leading to decreased communication and literacy skills due to the compact nature of the messages being sent, while others value the creativity and playfulness they allow (Breuer et al., 2021). Although emojis can be viewed as a supplement to written language or a visual language of their own, it cannot be taught like other language systems. Alshenqeeti (2016) states that it is “not something that can be taught, rather it is acquired over time through use and sharing.” It is also largely being spread to older generations by the younger generations, which differs from the way that language is usually passed down from older users of the language to younger learners.
When determining the impact that emojis have on literacy, it is first important to define what is meant by literacy in the context of emojis. Although their use is unlikely to ameliorate a persons use of traditional alphabet reading and writing practices, they can support a different kind of digital literacy and communication. Emojis are generally viewed as supplementary to written text or as an important element in constructing compositions that communicate meaning along with images and text in social media posts on platforms like Snapchat (Albawardi & Jones, 2020). Emojis serve the function of complimenting and enhancing digital communication in a concise and creative way (Alshenqeeti, 2016). Emojis are commonly used in public writing and allow for a multi-modal form of expression which could be viewed as an advancement in a digital form of literacy.
Emojis and their Impact on Education
Overall, the biggest impact that emojis have in traditional K-12 education lies in providing opportunities for quick feedback and aiding students in the identification of emotions. Emojis have been used in the Finnish education system to provide students with technology enhanced feedback about students’ self-regulation abilities but found that students were unsure about the specifics of what event each emoji was referring to and desired more specificity in feedback received from instructors (Oinas et al., 2021). They have also been used to help boys express their feelings towards dance with the goal of creating a more male inclusive dance environment (Keane, 2022).
Although Albawardi & Jones, 2020 state that apps like snapchat that allow for the layering of image, text and emojis to create new meaning should not be used in schools, partially due to the fact that formal instruction may curb the creativity with which it is currently used. However, it is important to acknowledge the different literacies that students interact with outside the classroom and place value on the learning opportunities they provide.
Outside of K-12 education, emoji use serves to enhance the efficacy of current practices in areas such as healthcare education. Emoji use has been suggested as part of healthcare education for rural communities in countries with great language diversity and lower literacy rates, such as India. By producing a series of culturally-relevant emojis that can be applied for healthcare use, Bhattacharya et al. (2019) believe that basic healthcare education could be more effectively disseminated using smartphones, while also cutting down on administrative costs associated with translation services and distribution of materials. A number of barriers to healthcare exist in rural communities with low literacy rates and effective use of emojis can be useful in educating people about sanitation practices and symptoms of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. Effective health education can dramatically improve effective primary healthcare and people’s lives (Bhattacharya et al., 2019). In a time where the climate crisis is facilitating the introduction of diseases into parts of the world where they are not typically found and intervention is key to slowing the global spread of diseases, effective education health communication that transcends language barriers is increasingly important.
Although it is unlikely that emojis will become a true universally understood visual language due to local variations in use and differences in interpretation, it is a system that is being globally used in a vernacular context to enhance meaning in online expression. It has begun to make its way into the more formal contexts of education, healthcare and its usage continues to evolve, particularly on social media platforms.
References:
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