It is undeniable that communication has been drastically different since the development of the Internet. In the past, we communicated through traditional media such as handwritten letters, newspapers, landline telephone, etc. of which each mode of communication has its own rhetoric principle applied to serve a specific purpose. For instance, marketing use emphasis on speech in order to grab the attention of the buyer and ultimately persuade them to purchase something.
However, as the internet begins to grow exponentially, people shifted from having a physical conversation, handwritten letters, phone calls, and more to texting online. Although texting provides an immediate effect on the delivery of the message, it has one of the biggest disadvantages is that a line of text does not show any emotion, nor does it accurately represent our verbal tone. In order to adapt to the changes in our communication channels and social trend, the creations of emojis have been proven to be effective in enhancing the quality of communication as they serve as a visual language to convey the speaker’s emotion as well as provide non-verbal cues in conversation.
Emoticons :) Vs Emojis 🙂
According to the Oxford dictionary, emojis are ‘a small digital image used to express an idea or emotion in emails, on the internet, on social media. However, it is important that we make the distinction between emoticons and emojis as they are used interchangeably by the media, but they are very different from one another. Emoticons are the combination of punctuation marks, letters, or numbers on your keyboard to assemble an icon that represents the basic emotion, for instance, a ‘<’ with conjunction number ‘3’makes a heart. Emojis, on the other hand, is a purposely designed image to illustrate a feeling. The limited uses of emoticons have caused its user to shun away and turn to emojis for more diverse functions and practical uses. Emojis aid the visual process in non-verbal communication as it creates a conceptual image for the conversation. In an imaginative situation in which you are texting with your friend about a funny cat video, you typed ‘hey look at this funny cat video’ and to which your friend reply ‘haha’. The dialogue seems to be very monotone and there’s no meaningful emotional expression to demonstrate that the conversation is funny. If you were to add a 😂 or 😺 next to it, it would have been different as you can picture two friends laughing at a cat video. This is an example of the rhetorical power that emoji utilize in our regular daily life to convey emotion and ideas more vividly.
Emojis As A Rhetorical Device 🤔
Emojis and their rhetorical appeal were discussed extensively in an academic article written by Jing Ge-Stadnyk and Ulrike Gretzel. In the social media context, emojis are widely adopted to foster interpersonal relationships and provide a means for people to maintain as well as promote playful engagements in their relationships. There are always moments where you can’t find any topic to start a conversation with your significant others and so emojis are then used as a communication device. Its signals to others that you are thinking of them and in turn initiate conversations.
One of emojis unique properties is that each pictograph carries a meaning so you can essentially form a sentence or a noun using a string of continuous emojis, a demonstration would be ‘🏃♀️👰’ means a runaway bride or ‘🚶♂️⬅😴’ means going to sleep/bed. This is exceptionally useful in encouraging playful behavior among two or more individuals in a conversation. We all remember that time when the internet once had a laugh with these types of emojis arrangement before with people’s creative ‘sentences’ 🤣
The Universal Attractiveness Of Emojis
Emojis helped make the message to be more persuasive, and descriptive to the user as they provide non-verbal cues to the receiver. This is because the emojis appeal to the pathos of the reader; people are inclined to respond to message with emojis as humans are connected to emotion psychologically. If there emojis present in a sentence, you’ll more connected to the sender as a human is built to mimic and wired to have emotional contagion and so when we see a smiley face or heart online, our mood changes and we change our facial expressions to match that of the emojis. In a more realistic situation, a social media influencer post about her trying out this vegan, low-carb, healthy food recipe with 🥗😋💪, people would instinctively want to try out that recipe because the emojis attached resembles the ideal result that the readers have in mind.
The presence of emojis also attracts and heightens the attention of the reader in text-based communication as the pop of color adds to the visual effects. It aids in the communication process as they eliminated the misinterpretation of the words by providing clearer intentions through the actions or expressions in emojis. The most basics of emojis have facial expressions that represent the simplest of emotion such as joy 😊, sad 🙁; and as it evolved over time, it includes more complex expressions and gestures to illustrate feelings that are hard to describe by words. If you are in an argument with your annoying friend about which burger chains are the best and you want to add a hint of sarcasm to show that you’re right, you could use 😏 or 😒.
Another aspect about emojis that make is more persuasive to users than other new media rhetorical device is that it is inclusive. In the 21st century, personal identity is very important to individuals, and emotion taps into that realm by having multiple skin tones 👩🏻👨👩🏿 and sexual identities 👩🏾🤝🧑🏻👨🏿🤝👨🏾👭. You are more likely to have positive interaction with the sender of inclusive emojis as it connects to you on a personal level, and it showed that the other person acknowledges your preference.
That being said, emojis are conceptual metaphors with rhetorical appeal as they have versatile use in computer-mediated communication. Interestingly, aside from emoji’s intentional use to convey emotion, emojis are found to be used as deceptive strategies to mask a person’s true feeling in uncomfortable situations in a study conducted by the University of Bath. Although, it might seem like a negative aspect of emojis, it entirely true as in reality, there are times when you are emotionally unavailable to communicate but you don’t want to cause any unintentional damage to the relationship so it is better to fake it. Another unique property that emoji have is that it also acts as a universal visual language; you will understand the general context of a given situation based on the gesture of the speaker even when you don’t know what language they are using. An example would be ‘Tui đang vui 😊’, you would guess that it something to do with happiness, right? and you’re correct, it means ‘I’m happy’ in Vietnamese.
Nonetheless, emojis also carries the threat of misinterpretation as their appearance varies across different platforms and people’s own personal idea of what that emoji meant. This ultimately relies on the way that the sender structures their sentence to accurately represent their idea and avoid being misunderstood. Don’t be like a mom trying to figure out what ‘🍆’ means other than a vegetable!
In our modern age where computer-mediated communication or communication via social media is dominant, emojis play a vital role in facilitating relationships and filling the gap left by written communication. The persuasiveness of emojis as a rhetorical device derives from its ability to function as ‘visual metaphors’ to deliver not only emotions but information as well. It is fascinating to witness the development of emojis and its increased usage of emojis since the introduction of the iPhones, it is evident that emojis have assisted us so many times in communications and maintain interpersonal relationships. And so, this leaves the question: is Emojis going to last till forever or until something pop-ups and take over 🧐