he english language articulately. Words and language are important because they can allow us to express the unique, individual, complex experience that we have. For example, it is estimated that there are one million words in the english language, and only 2,823 emojis. If we look closely at feelings, there are about 1 – 6 emojis that can convey sadness, but there are more than 100 words that can be used to express this emotion. That’s because emotions and thoughts are very complex, have many different shades and can feel different for everyone.You can’t convey those unique features and experiences in your writing with emojis, and if you are simply replacing that using those emojis you won’t know how to express these feelings. This is not the direction we should be going, especially in 2018.
And that brings me to my next argument, how they can be easily misunderstood
because emotions and thoughts are so complex, they can be easily misinterpreted and misunderstood when expressed using simplistic emojis. Keep in mind that we are not talking about the country flags or animals or obvious emojis, we are talking about the faces with expressions that are open to interpretation. Emojis have different meanings for different people. What you associate with an emoji is dependant upon the society you live in and what you’ve been exposed to. An example of this is the waving hand emoji, To people from China it means “Goodbye Forever” as in, I never want to see you again GET LOST! Overall this can create more barriers to communication than it solves, making things way more confusing than it should be! A local example of this is Julie Bishop’s use of the red faced emoji to describe Vladimir Putin on Twitter. This emoji used on its own caused confusion as to what Bishop thought of Putin, Was she trying to say that he was an angry man? Or was she trying to say that she was angry about him? Due to limited context and no words to back up Bishop’s opinion, there was controversy around her response.
Hence, there can be communication difficulties when the relationship of an emoji to context is not effectively implied or explained.
