Task 6: An Emoji Story
For this activity, I chose one of my favourite light-hearted movies. It actually worked really well for emojis because the story is so visual. Golf, hockey, money, and a whole lot of chaos . I started with the title first since that was easy to capture with a simple smiley face, then built the rest of the sequence around the main events and characters. The trick was deciding how much to include without making it too crowded.
I relied mostly on ideas and images instead of sounds or syllables. Each emoji stands for a key part of the movie rather than a specific word. It made me think about how we naturally read images and symbols now, even outside of texting. You can glance at a row of emojis and instantly get the general idea, even if the “grammar” isn’t clear.
This also reminded me of my time in Japan, where symbols and pictographs are everywhere. They are on maps, menus, signs, textbooks or brochures…the list goes on. Information there is often presented visually first, and it’s amazing how quickly you learn to read meaning from icons, colours, and layout. The language itself reinforces that skill. Japanese writing, especially kanji (the Chinese characters), naturally forms pictures in your mind. A single character can express an entire concept or image. This is something that can often take multiple words in English. Reading Japanese feels like interpreting small, vivid pictures, while reading English feels more linear and sound-based.
That difference really stood out to me during this task. Creating a story with emojis felt closer to reading Japanese, where visuals and meaning are tightly connected, rather than spelling out each sound like in English. Emojis, like kanji, carry layers of meaning that depend on context and interpretation. As Kress (2005) notes, meaning today is often made through multiple modes. That is, text, image, sound and these modes shape how we read, think, and communicate.
Overall, this was a fun task that made me think about how much meaning can fit into something so small. Whether it’s emojis or kanji, we’re constantly reading the world through pictures—and that balance between text and image seems to define modern literacy today.
Reference
Kress, G. (2005). Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 2(1), 5–22.