Is Emoji a Proxy?

 

In the early 1990s, Scott Fahlman had invented emoticons some several digital smileys and emoticons were used in fonts, pictograms, graphical representations. Shigetaka Kurita created the first emoji in 1999, he had to work within a grid measuring 12 by 12 pixels. Often we get confused in emoticons and emojis. The major difference between as emoticon and emoji is An emoticon is a typographic display of a facial representation, used to convey emotion in a text-only medium and the emoji are extensions to the character set used by most operating systems today.

The key difference between an emoticon and emoji is, Emoticons are punctuation marks, letters, and numbers used to create pictorial icons that generally display emotion or sentiment. Whereas emoji are a recent invention they are pictographs of faces, objects, and symbols.

I think it's fascinating that there are different combinations for emoticons and that so many people use them in the world. There are different styles of emoticons few of them are:

       Western-style: Emoticons in Western style have the eyes on the left, followed by the nose and the mouth. The 2 character vision without the nose :) is very popular.

       Japanese style(kaomoji):  It is also known as kaomoji. Japan popularized a style of emoticons 顔文字 kaomoji (face characters) that can be understood without tilting one's head to the left. These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (*_*).

       Combination of Japanese and western styles:  these emoticons are known as “anime style”. These characters are available on western keyboards. They are used in mainstream venues, online gaming, instant messaging, etc.

Here are a few basic examples of typographic emoticons:

:) – this is a popular emoticon which means happy.

:( - this is the opposite of the above emoticon which means sad.

:/-the emoticon means you are upset about something.

<33- this emoticon indicates the feeling of love

^_^: this emoticon expresses your smile.

Emojis are ideograms and smileys used in electronic messages and web pages. Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places, and types of weather, animals. They are much like emoticons, but emoji are pictures rather than typographic. The smiley company developed a smiley dictionary in 2001. The evolution of emojis took place because of the cultural influence and the present emoji’s which we use was developed in 2009 and is called the modern emoji.

 Cons of using an emoji:

In the day to day, informal communication includes emoji as a form of expression of a human feeling.  There are various types of emoji used to express our feelings. The emoji conveys our feeling to the other person. But in most of the cases, the emoji are often misunderstood. In some cases, this misunderstanding is related to how the actual emoji design is interpreted by the viewer, in other cases the emoji that was sent is not shown in the same way on the receiving side.

EMOJI A TRENDSETTER:

Every year Oxford Dictionaries select a word that has emerged as the most prominent in that particular year. But astonishingly in 2015 word of the year is not a word at all it is an emoji “Face with tears of joy”. This emoji had been a trend and similarly, emojis like these are becoming a part of life they are replacing various materialistic things. Excessive usage of emoji has turned into a form of keychains, pillows, bags, etc. The world has become home to emoji.

Emoji are a language of visual short cuts. Today’s youth finds emoji interesting and more attractive compared to text. The emoji brings a positive a joyful feeling in the text and that is what makes it attractive. They have become a great way to express feelings, They help in saving time. For people who prefer less talking and typing, emojis help them choose the right emotion with a more customized and personalized way to get it done within seconds. Almost all of the people prefer emoji more than text and I think text conveys more feelings compared to emoji.

I feel the human emotions are really sensitive and few emotional communication, when done through one to one conversation, is better understood than virtually. The emoji cannot express the exact emotion of a person. Not only emotional communication but also happiness excitement cannot always be expressed through emoji. The number of exclamation marks when you are eager to tell someone about something more expressive than an emoji. The love you show to someone cannot be expressed heartfully with an emoji.

 

I hereby would like to conclude by saying that emoji cannot directly convey our feelings. They are just like a companion to the text. Emotions play an important role in a human's life they help us think to behave and react, if they are not expressed in the right way there are chances of frequent misconceptions in life. The benefit of Emojis, they are amazing for social sites such as Twitter. Since tweets only allow 140 characters, emojis help you say what you need to say, what you want to say, all under 140 characters but the feelings are better understood verbally or in the form of text. No matter how much ever the emoji is upgraded they cannot be a proxy for human emotions.