All the dominant world languages today evolved in a world dominated by writing.
Handwritten communication has been the dominant norm for hundreds of years, and even though a large part of society was illiterate, the written language was developed by people writing by hand.
The logic that you use to develop a written language when you are writing by hand is much different than the written language you would develop if writing each symbol was as simple as pressing a key.
In the modern world, hieroglyphics have disappeared. There are likely many reasons for this that exist above my pay grade, but I can’t help but think that if keyboards existed 2000 years ago, they would have sustained much better.
Over the past 10 years, the use of emojis, gifs, and memes has exploded. So much so that people joke about how young people seem to talk to emojis.
There is very real truth to the observation. Young people really are using emojis and gifs as a form of language.
They can convey emotion and meaning much better through a crying face than “I’m sorry you’re going through that”. Or with a crying Michael Jordan than writing “I can’t believe they are so dumb.”
In the past, drawing a smiley face had a high cost compared with writing out the equivalent in words. Now it is the reverse.
We are starting to see the same thing happen with gifs. Over the past 3 years, most popular chat apps have added gif sharing features. Gifs allow a near infinite about of expression and fun to be had in a chat and they are available to anyone in seconds.
What is fascinating about the use of emojis and gifs in conversation is that they are not tied to any one language. Culture will, of course, impact the meaning and popularity of individual emoji’s, but no matter if you speak Spanish, English, or Japanese, you will be able to understand the crying laughing face or the red angry face.
That is a powerful feature that has been added to our ability to communicate and we are only now starting to see how it affects communication.
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