Love and Relationships  

Emojis: The New Common Language Of Emotions

By Micah Emem Essien

25 July 2019   |   1:00 pm

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According to Merriam-Webster: “the emojis are any of various small images, symbols or icons in text fields in electronic communication to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey messages succinctly...” Basically, an emoji adds an emotional emphasis to a message. Emoji are akin to the tone of voices, pitch, in a telephone conversation. It…

Emoji Box | Photo: Pixabay

According to Merriam-Webster:

“the emojis are any of various small images, symbols or icons in text fields in electronic communication to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey messages succinctly…”

Basically, an emoji adds an emotional emphasis to a message. Emoji are akin to the tone of voices, pitch, in a telephone conversation. It also represents gestures in print.

There is one for however or whatever you feel; one to say how much you love, how angry you are and one for being unable to even explain your mood. The number of times you send these give the reader a clear context on the extent to which your message is trying to convey.

Sadly, we are missing basic elements of empathy with the use, misuse or misunderstanding of this mostly yellow face.

This leads to the question:

“Why do we perceive people who use emoji’s in chats as being friendlier?” Does the use or absence of it trigger a degree of safety?”

In telephone conversations, we can tell how nervous someone is or how angry just by the pitch of their voices. For face to face conversations, gesticulations and facial expressions can convey a lot and not hide much. Chats, however, leaves little to imagine. Especially in instances where the emoji are misused and oftentimes misinterpreted.

However, emojis are unofficial and can not be used in official company-client relations emails even though the intention might be to ease the tension. But still, a lot of people are uncertain and guarded. You meet someone new and you aren’t sure what all the smiley emojis are for, thoughts run through your head like – these jokes are not so funny anyway so why are they so gassed up?!

With the world today being so self-aware and enlightened on the signs of and symptoms of self-harm it is very important to look beyond the use of emojis as an ‘okay’ for good feeling or vibes.

Not everyone is well versed in the articulateness of the emoji language and this does not mean they do not mean well.

Sometimes, it just might be their insecurities playing out, the moment you feel the need to include emojis to subtly pass across your message you tend to lose the entire purpose of  a conversation in the first place.

In the end, be careful not to be caught up in the assumption of redefining communication. Whatever works for you is fine but be emoji sympathetic to those who can’t relate.

We would all be EmojiFine, las las!!