As we know and was reiterated in our readings this week, Bolter indicates that diagrams, illustrations, and maps have played an important role in the communicative power of printed books. (p. 48) There’s no doubt in my mind that the communicative power of a picture has played a role in the development and use of emojis in text technology. A single emoji tells a reader exactly what you are thinking much like a picture and invoke emotion.
I thought this task would be easy as I use emoji’s and bitmoji’s on a daily basis when I send informal text and instant messages. However, I found I struggled with this task and not being able to use proper spelling and grammar. I tried spacing out my emoji’s in a line, which didn’t work out so I ended up having to use some punctuation which included a colon, comma, and ampersand. I also created my emoji story on my iPhone in my Notes app and when I pasted it into my WordPress post, this happened (I ended up taking a screenshot of my emoji story):
????????????????: ????????
⭐️: ????????????????, ????????, ????????♂️????, ????????????
⭐️⭐️: ????????, ???????????? ????, ????????♂️
????????????????????????♂️???????????? ???????????? ???????? ????????
????????????????????????♂️????????????????????
6️⃣.1️⃣4️⃣:
????????♂️???? ❤️????????♂️????????????
???????????????? ➡️ ????????????????
????????????????, ????????,???????????????? ➡️ ????????????????????????
???????? ➡️ ????????
????????????& ???????? ➡️ ✈️????????????
????????♂️????, ????????♂️ ➡️ ???? ????????
???????????? ➡️ ✈️????????
As I created my emoji story, I relied on words and ideas rather than on syllables. For example, I used a single star emoji to indicate starring characters and 2 star emojis to represent the secondary characters I wrote about. I also explained the main plot of the TV show and then picked one episode to write about.
I started with the title of the show and as indicated in the example of the assignment, tried to give context to what type of movie, TV show, or book I was describing. I provided the title first because, as in Pictionary, it always helps to give some reference to my colleagues who may be trying to figure out what I was writing about.
I chose a story that I thought would be easy to interpret. I didn’t want to use emoji’s to explain a complicated plot. As I think that when you are choosing something like an emoji to depict text, the more complicated it is, the more your reader will get lost.
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
I think this is a Canadian comedy TV show and it might be Schitt’s Creek?
I’m loving the use of the cry laughing emoji and hope I am interpreting it correctly as comedy. I know sometimes the cry laughing emoji gets mixed up for JUST crying so it gets confusingly paired with some sad stuff.
I haven’t watched the show so I can’t confirm with the rest of your emoji story.
I can see how you’d think that, Linda, since the man with the black moustache does kind of look like Eugene Levy!! And the use of the poop emojis 🙂
Hi Linda!
Thanks for visiting my page!
You’re right! It is Schitt’s Creek that I wrote about. You did interpret the crying laughing emoji correctly – I was trying to convey the idea that the TV show I was writing about was a comedy.
Robin
Hey Robin,
This is great! When you mentioned that you “struggled with this task and not being able to use proper spelling and grammar” I realised I had a similar issue during my process. I wanted to show the relationship between emojis and the ideas they were representing, or at least give a concept of time and causality and this was hard to achieve! I made use of spaces and lines as best I could, but it shows the power of the little words we use in sentences like “and” “or” “then” “but”.
😀