By Tessa Lacey-Lockjaw
The advent of the internet and cellular phones has brought upon our generation a bastardized version of the English language. These days, ppl don’t rly remember what it was like to compose written thought longer then 140 characters. They’re all like ‘#WTF’ when they have to write 1 page for an essay. ‘That’s like 5 full tweets w/o url links, that’s #lame,’ but I think it’s wrong. It’s totally not hard to write that much, it’s very easy, I’m doing it right now. But that’s besides the point. What I want to talk to you ppl about is emoticons. Why do they exist, what do they ‘symbolize’ and why do ppl use them all the time?
“Emoticon” is a word derived from the latin prefix ‘emote’ meaning to ‘emote at’ something and ‘icon’ means icon, obviously (UrbanDictionary.com). The emoticon is a novel combination of improper grammar and punctuation: colons (lol), semicolons (semi-lol), dashes, hyphens, minus signs, subtraction signs, and half open/closed parenthesis/brackets/squiggly-bracket-parenthesis-hybrid-things-that-I-don’t-know-the-name-for-and-are-rly-hard-to-draw are arranged in such a way to resemble a humanoid face (Important Online Language Journal). It’s hard to tell who started using them 1st but my guess is that it was prolly someone from microsoft. Why do we need them? Cause ppl have been staring at screens for a rly long time and have forgotten how to read ‘body language’ and ‘communicate with one another’ (Email from my Youth Leader Pastor Joe). Also, it’s because this is the way we all communicate now, thru twitter, texting, and FB, so when we write something sarcastic we can put an emoticon to tell everyone that we are jk.
I have done alot of online research to find out what ppl are rly saying thru emoticons. Our world has evolved so much that what we think emotions are implying is actually not what they rly mean. Things have gotten rly complicated in this modern era, and as such, ppl are starting to feel more intense things than those simple regular emotions like happy and sad because some rly complex issues have arisen in our hearts because of the times we live in. Thru the internet it is hard to convey these complex emotions thru typing and status updates so our modern emoticons have adapted to what ppl are rly meaning to say. Here is the data that I’ve collected from a survey I posted on FB.
Negative Series:
:-( “I haven’t pooped yet today, I feel off.”
:’-( “It’s been almost a week since I pooped, I think I’m dying.”
>:-0 “It’s been a full week since I pooped, and, GD it, I’m going to poop today!”
Positive Series:
:-) “I’m horny.”
;-) If written to a member of the same gender: “I would like to engage in homosexual love-making with you.” If written to a member of the opposite gender: “I am actually a homosexual, in case you didn’t know.”
:-P “I think we need to see a doctor because look what’s growing on my tongue now.”
Miscellaneous Series:
e.e “My Uncle Al, who is not rly my uncle but a ‘family friend’ is coming over tonight to drink all of my mom and dad’s vodka. He’s creepy and makes me sit on his lap, ew.”
:-/ “Parents just don’t understand.”
:-9 “One day I’m going to be famous for something and I’m going to have my own reality show.”
8-) “Who is the kid that can get me the salvia or DMT?”
So, as you can see, emoticons are as varied as our everyday lives are (Wikipedia.org). And everyday, we use emoticons. Whether it’s to your boo, your bff, your mom or dad, or even on your English comp paper, you use them. Everyday.
:-)
