Are emojis destroying meaningful expression? Sinéad McClure considers the impact of contemporary modes of communication on human conversation.

I'm old enough to have emoticons almost pass me by, and arguably too old for emojis, but I'm just the right age to remember the yellow smiley face beaming out at me from t-shirts in the 1980s. This makes me curious about how deeply the smiley face has impacted communication. Are icons becoming the universal language? Are we moving towards saying it with symbols, again?

Parietal art (drawing on walls) is something we know existed aeons ago. It was in some cases decorative and beautiful, and to be enjoyed for that purpose alone. In other cases it was communicative, speaking when people didn't—making it accessible, recognisable, and ultimately simple. Fast forward to the smiley face; a symbol which has its roots in a 1960s advert, and subsequently became a 1970s hippy icon. It then evolved into a subversive comic book character, before turning to rave and all things acid house in the late 1980s. Today it’s found in a series of emojis—from grinning face to anguished face, winking to starry eyed to, well, just meh. So many smileys, so little time.

I think we are too smart for a form of communication that has persevered for too long. What was a little light banter on social media is beginning to infest the workplace—project management tools with a built-in thumbs up, and winking faces sinisterly concluding emails. There are too many ways to smile, look sad, laugh, and cry. The visual is moving away from simplicity and accessibility, and bordering on confusion.

Telegrams once imparted important messages using as few words as possible. Messages from the front line delivered words that could tear at a person's heart, and in an instant implode their perceived future. Words were once a commodity, and this made them extremely powerful. When the mode of delivering words became easier and less expensive, we had the heyday of written communication: the letter. This was another powerful tool for conveying information where words could be as poetic as they were playful, and as throwaway as they were memorable. Imagine our 21st century idea-gram, and our many smiley faces trying to perform similar services. I can't.

We live in an age where translation is at our fingertips, so why are we removing words from our universal language?

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