The task this week was to write the title and plot of a story using only emojis and my choice was to choose a television show that I enjoy and write the title and then describe the main characters.  I have to admit that although I found this task interesting and enjoyable, I had difficulties with it.  I am a person who is very verbal, and I like to rely on text and words to convey ideas.  I find that I am much more able to effectively communicate when I have time to think, write and then edit my ideas into a coherent discussion.  This is one of the main reasons I really enjoy the affordances of a word-processor that allows me to edit/cut/paste as I go along.

I used my android phone for this task with the built in keyboard and available emojis, wrote the stories on the ‘notes’ app, and then screenshot it.  As I was trying to convey specific thoughts, I would actually use the ‘search’ in the emoji field to try and find an appropriate picture to convey my thoughts – so even though the assignment was about portraying ideas with graphics, I still used text to help with the task.  My difficulties may be a function of my age as I did not grow up using texting and emojis to communicate like younger generations so it does not come as naturally.  I find for myself that the most useful element of emojis is the facial expressions because they help to convey the appropriate and intended tone in my text messages.  For example, a text message saying “I would love to see that show” with a brightly smiling emoji attached is a totally different message than “I would love to see that show” with a puking emoji attached.  Other than that, if I want to write a message, text and words are so much clearer than pictures.

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

My process was to make a general list of the ideas that I wanted to communicate (such as character traits), and then try to find appropriate pictures to suit those traits.  Specific words are difficult to translate into this graphic form – for example, does an old lady emoji mean a grandmother, older sister, mother, etc.  Combined with other emojis, hopefully some context is added to increase the clarity of the intended message.  Context is critical for effective communication, and there must be a common understanding of the underlying context.  Does a picture of a broom mean that someone is sweeping a floor, or riding it as a form of transportation, or using it to chase away stray birds?  Different cultures may assign different meanings to different emojis.  For example, a red heart in our society generally means love.  Does it have the same meaning in an Ethiopian culture or a Mexican culture?  This reminds me of an episode called ‘Darmok’ in the TV series ‘Star Trek the Next Generation’.  In this episode, a species is encountered that speaks completely in metaphors and references to historical events, almost like they were communicating with verbal emojis.  When the crew of the Enterprise comes across this species, they are unable to understand anything because they do not understand the underlying context.  In the same vein, I have difficulty deciphering emoji messages without strong context.  “By the standard of phonetic writing, however, picture writing lacks narrative power.  The picture elements extend over a broad range of verbal meanings; each element means too much rather than too little.” (Bolter, 2001)

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

Although I initially had some difficulty choosing an appropriate story to portray, I did start with the title because it was fairly easy to represent pictorially with available emojis.  Then as I mentioned above, I listed character traits that I wanted to convey and attempted to find appropriate emojis to fit.  It was difficult because I would try and find a specific type of picture to represent my idea but it wasn’t available, so I had to find other ways to represent that idea.  I also tried to plan out the sequence of the emojis so that the context could be more clear.  The importance of logical sequence is expressed by Kress (2005), “The temporal and sequential logic of speech, and, leaning on speech, of writing, lends itself to the representation of actions and events in time; …The spatial and simultaneous logic of image-representation lends itself equally readily to the representation of salient entities and their (spatially expressed) relations.” (Bolter, 2005)

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

Partially, yes.  Since this is a TV show with multiple episodes, an entire episode plot would be extremely difficult to summarize with emojis, so I focused upon the character traits and roles of the main players finding representative graphics to convey concepts such as greed, alcoholism, etc.  Direct relationships between characters were more difficult to express.

In my opinion, emojis and graphics cannot replace text but only supplement it in order to clarify tone and intended meaning.  Without text, emojis have little to no context, and therefore are difficult to universalize.  “In the late age of print, however, the death of prose will never be complete, because our culture will want to keep the patient alive, if moribund, so that the mutual remediation with digital media can continue.”. (Bolter, 2001)

References:

Chapter 4. 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

Kress (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learningLinks to an external site.. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.