Language is devolving… or in other “words”
Communication has been revolutionizing since the very
beginnings of the cuneiform. The alphabet was a major improvement from the use
of symbols and pictorial representations. However, I feel as if our society is
devolving back to the times of hieroglyphics with emoji symbols. The issue with
emojis is very similar to the problems that the Egyptians encountered around
2000 BC. Hieroglyphics consisted of an abundance of signs, with no vowels, so
people struggled with deciphering pronunciation, context, and understanding the
deeper meaning. In Language in Thought and Action, Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa expresses her view on ignoring contexts when she states, “It is clear that the ignoring of contexts in any act of
interpretation is at best a stupid practice. At its worst, it can be a vicious
practice,” (Hayakawa 62). We
experience the same miscommunication when clicking on our emoji keyboard
instead of using our words. For example, many of us girls can relate to
thinking of a caption for a selfie, and tend to make their caption just one
single emoji. When texting someone, common mistakes of using the wrong emoji or
over abusing an emoji result in awkward situations. 
In January of this year, a Brooklyn teenager
was arrested for posting Facebook statuses with emojis that were “terrorist
threats” toward the police.
Even though the teen did not threaten to
take action towards the police, the use of a gun emoji pointing towards a
police, especially on social media, needed to be taken to serious
measures. Every single word, picture, or
even emoji could mean something. The fact that a tiny picture could mean
nothing at all, simultaneously, proves that language is devolving. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
believes that our world is turning into Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; people
will come to love their oppression, to love the technologies that take away
their abilities to reason or think. The iPhone is very addicting and people
cling to their cellular devices for resources, entertainment, socializing, or
research purposes 24/7. Postman explains how our society’s distractions can
possibly result in a culture-death when he states,
“When a population becomes distracted by
trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments,
when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a
people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a
nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” (Postman).
When reading Amusing Ourselves to Death,
it is pathetic that my motivation to finish a chapter of the book was rewarding
myself with a Netflix episode of One Tree Hill … Therefore, I, Gluten Free
Goldie was
You are the only one who really went into the emoji question--interesting! I just saw a commercial the other day about how apparently you can text a pizza emoji to Domino's and they will send you an actual pizza.
ReplyDeleteNo one (including me) has brought Language in Thought and Action, but this issue reminds me of the fact that a signal is a very base, pre-verbal form of communication that can in fact be taught to chimps. Isn't a picture of pizza a signal? At the very least it's an ideogram, which is less complex than a word, which is made up of phonemes and morphemes et al.
(also, if it's pathetic to bribe yourself with Netflix, then I'm right there with you--it's my favorite self-bribe when I doing a writing sprint and working toward a break).
Alex, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your response to the prompt. Your claim that language was devolving due to the phenomenon of emojis replacing words was completely different from all the other responses I read, and it was a refreshing outlook on the subject matter. I also liked that you referenced "Language in Thought and Action", because I think that book and your response shared the belief that miscommunication is becoming more and more common as a result of quick digital communication. Because society as a whole is so used to instantaneous messages, understanding the context of the message has no longer become of much importance. In addition, the comparison of how today's way of communicating (through emojis) is very, very similar to the mode of prehistoric communication (with hieroglyphics) was shockingly accurate-that was a great observation on your part. I've never thought about how, by using emojis, we have essentially begun to make the transition back to the mode of communication that we used tens of thousands of years ago. And your claim of the devolution of language was well supported by that piece of information. Well done!
ReplyDelete