Love them or hate them, emojis have become an important part of our 21st-century culture. Over 90 percent of the world's 4.6 billion internet users send them. In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries chose Face With Tears of Joy (
) as its Word of the Year. Two years later, Hollywood tried to follow the fad(短暂的狂热) with The Emoji Movie, though the reviews for the film were poor.
However, some language experts are against this form of communication. They consider it a step back into the dark ages of illiteracy(没文化). Emojis, they say, are making us dumb____communicators. People are depending on these "picture characters", rather than words, to express their feelings.
I want to challenge this point of view. I'm afraid these experts have misunderstood how communication works.
Emojis aren't replacing language. Instead, they are making our message more understandable by filling in the emotional signals(感情符号). Here is an example. Without an emoji, what I mean by the following message would be puzzling: "Hey, I fell down and banged(磕) my head on the kitchen wall." My addressee(收信人) might have difficulty working out my true feelings. Should he laugh ("Ha-ha! You're-so-silly!") or take pity on me ("Oh, hope it doesn't hurt too badly.")? The addition of an emoji (
or
) will spell out the meaning behind my words. Emojis are to text messages what body language is to spoken communication. They allow us to communicate more effectively.
So we probably don't have to worry about this fad as long as we don't overuse emojis. These lovely characters, on the whole, are helpful.
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