How by chance a world language has emerged – culture

The big changes rarely have the force of an astronomical sensation. Also drawn from the work of 25-year-old Shigetaka Kurita in 1999, barely a note. With a pencil, the employee of a Japanese telecommunications company scribbled small images on paper, five faces, a happy, a furious, a sad, a surprised and a confused. But also: a sun, an umbrella open and closed. Kurita wanted to better represent weather forecasts on small screens of new mobile phones.

It was she, the birth of emoji. "It was a coincidental idea," Kurita said in retrospect, "if I did not do it, someone else would have done it." Today Twenty years later, emojis are an integral part of digital culture. Out of 176 symbols, 2623 became. Initially despised by many children today, 92% of people around the world use emojis. No other language is developing so quickly. This year alone, 157 new symbols need to be added. The Emoji language is currently growing about seven times faster than the Duden. Where language is the wrong term. Everyone notices that, for the pleasure of all, he tries to change completely. Even simple sentences like "Can you take Paul to daycare?" Push emojis to their limits. But what are the emojis they can only supplement the language?

Above all, they became one: they grew up. In the meantime, they are taken seriously by both linguists and judges. Because he sent an emoji gun to his ex-girlfriend, a Frenchman was sentenced to three months in prison in 2016 – the victim's lawyer had convincingly demonstrated that the woman had found the extremely real emoji threat and had not left home. A 17-year-old from New York posted emojis on Facebook in 2015, with police officers holding guns in front of their heads. The authorities also took this threatening gesture seriously: the teenager was immediately arrested because he had already been struck by violence. Emojis are more than just signs, they are part of our reality – for better or for worse.

Emojis helps to quarrel without harming

Growing up, it is also illuminating one's own talents Strengthen the forces. For emojis, it's mostly the tempo and the height. These are the fastest and most direct means of communication available to share what we feel. Even half asleep, smileys, suns, thumbs still penetrate our consciousness. If the characters are abruptly deleted from a communication, it immediately changes the pitch. What is happening, ask Emoji Natives in such situations: The other seems so hard. Because emojis help in one of the most difficult disciplines of human interaction: arguing without hurting. They can be a fun package for things we want to say very seriously. A smiley mark the irony. A monkey who does not see anything is an admission of guilt.

For some users, emoji is the most linguistic form of the world, the most human. Because emotions are much closer to us than information. Even the traditional Oxford Dictionary certifies Emoji culture as a "nuanced form of expression".

Photos: The Diversity of the Internet Language

And in one, most linguists agree: emojis are an advance in the written language. retrogression. The British linguist Vyvyan Evans argues in the book "The Emoji Code" with the experimental nature of human communication. The language has always looked for new ways, in the form of abbreviations, new terms and slang. Now with small digital images. Other linguists even see the earliest beginnings of an emoji grammar: how to judge something, for example, always follows directly what has happened. Thus, for example: hairdresser-emoji, color palette. And then: screaming smiley.

Passwords with emojis – easier to keep

The success of emojis proves exactly what the researchers call an iconic turnaround: a change in the orientation of the word to the word. ;picture. Communication becomes more and more visual. Security companies even plan to use emojis for passwords. There are many more ways to combine them, and we can remember them even better.

Of course, emojis are also children of their time: in the early years, for example, the two female emojis were two women prostitutes with rabbit ears. There are now neutral faces. The revolver was turned into a water pistol to disarm hate stations. Since 2015, there are emoji in different skin colors. This year is yet to come: an emoji scarf, a super heroine, a dazed face, redhead. A menstrual emoji is being discussed, as well as a top five emoji with American and North Korean flags in shirt sleeves for a few weeks now.

Emojis are still missing in our manuscript

The characters who go on the smartphone and what it looks like are decided in Mountain View, California. There, Unicode employees are sitting. The company, an association of all major US Internet companies, has been monitoring emojis since 2010. But why dictate the vocabulary of the most modern language in the world of a non-democratically legitimized organization? The "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" calls the enormous influence of the panel on the universal image treasure "a censorship of symbols". And the linguist Evans requires that Unicode work with an international organization. Blue helmets for emojis!

But no matter how essential emoji are today, there is one area where they are completely absent: in our manuscript. But maybe the time has not come for scrawled doodle emojis. And one more thing we should learn: how to use emojis without boring. Twenty years old, they are old now, a good time, class cats to dump the thumbs of avalanche, just because someone has downloaded math homework. Emojis can do a lot more.

(Tages-Anzeiger)

created: 18.07.2018, 18:17