EMOJIS AS NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION: THE NEW WAY OF EXPRESSION

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A Documented Essay

Presented to

The College of Arts, Sciences, and Education

Trinity University of Asia

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In Partial Fulfilment

Of the requirements in Purposive Communication

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Submitted by:

Castillo, Micah Azizza

Etrata, Jezzel

Liwanag, Danielle Anne Mariae B.

1MT03

College of Medical Technology

 Development transpires when change occurs. As years pass by, progress in various aspects

is perceived like in communication process. From tribal age, usage of oral communication without

a well-built alphabet or system of writing down to the current electronic age, presence of print

materials and automated devices. In the advancement of communication, it made way to different

forms of communication mainly verbal and non-verbal, which transformed and enhanced human

way of interaction. The rise of electronic devices opened doors to wider utilization of non-verbal

communication particularly the existence of emojis.

Non-verbal communication is the interaction between two or more people conversing about

a certain topic using different modes such as body language, eye contacts, gestures, facial

expressions, and sign languages, excluding spoken words. According to Richard Nordquist (2018),

psychiatrist Jurgen Ruesch first introduced the term non-verbal communication in 1956, which has

been documented as a critical phase of communication. Critical in a sense that the meaning that

the writer or speaker wants to convey might not be the one that the receiver perceives, which can

disturb the whole conversation. Moreover, studies claim that non-verbal linguistic plays a function

that is more significant than simply enhancing the words (B. Wood, 1981). Its essence in the

communication process greatly affects the continuous development of how people communicate

with one another. It is now widely used, not only through the modes mentioned, but also through

intermingling with others over electronic media, or what is called digital communication.

One example of Non-verbal communication is chatting over the internet with the use of

various technologies and applications arising. In this type of communication, aside from the use

of words to state and express thoughts, emojis are also utilized. According to Alizah K. Lowell

(2016), emojis are the small icons like smiley faces, winking eyes, hearts of all shapes, sizes and

colors that we use in text messages, emails and social media. These emojis add more feelings to
what have been said and it intensifies the emotion a person wants to convey. She also added that

emojis increase the meticulousness and nuance of our often super-brief and open-to-

misunderstanding communications because a picture is worth a thousand words. The emergence

of emojis are more than a millennial messaging vogue. These are constructed to give life to a plain

text. Emojis are like additional messages in an image mode.

There are numerous things that people love and enjoy in which we share them to our loved

ones and they do this through social media, directly or indirectly. There are things that they like to

add in a text-message or anything the involves mass media in order to “express” or “spice up” a

conversation or a post (may it be Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Things like : - ( or : - )

Long before emojis infiltrated our smartphones or tablets, we used a slightly less techy

version. These are little punctuation marks like colons, semi-colons, dashes, parentheses, etc. with

certain arrangements that make up what’s now known as emoticons which are interpreted as

“emotion icons.” Let’s look into the brief history of emoticons and how it came to emojis.

There is no documentation as to who started it but there is someone who initiated this.

According to 3 sources, namely: Bustle, TIME, and Overdrive, 36 years ago - that’s 1982, a

computer scientist in Carnegie Mellon University named Scott Fahlman, suggested: if you’re being

humorous, label your comment with a smiley face using the colon, dash, and parenthesis. This is

also to distinguish comical posts from serious ones. In a span of time, that was just that. It didn’t

improve further until 15 years later, Nicolas Loufrani of the London-based Company ‘Smiley,’

recognized that animated ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)

emoticons would provide an enhanced interactive user experience in digital and compiled a

comprehensive emoticon dictionary (Edwin de Abreu, 2015). Not long after, emoticons became

more pronounced with the involvement of animation.

 Emojis were made known by a Japanese artist, through the person of Shigetaka Kurita.

Kurita worked on the development team for a mobile internet platform, with the desire to create

an eye-catching edge to deliver a message in a simple way. To make this happen, he sketched a

set of 12-by-12 pixel images that could be chosen from a grid, and then directed on mobiles in

individual characters. The original set of emojis comprise images for weather (sun, moon, clouds,

rain, snow), traffic (car, train airplane, ship), technology (telephone, mobile phone, television,

computer), and time. (A. Pardes, 2018)

Emojis have been popularized in Japan when they first appeared on Japanese mobile

phones in the late ‘90s and in the past years, emojis became a trademark of communication (A.

Pardes, 2018). Emojis are becoming the new language in the digital world and today there are

thousands of them, illustrating not only people’s emotions but also depicting diverse graphics in

different genre. In 1999, emojis are born. It is a set which includes icons for weather, traffic,

technology, and time. In 2010, Unicode, which is a nonprofit group that works to maintain text

standards across computers, officially adopts emojis and created hundreds more like cat faces

emoting happiness, anger and tears. In the years 2015 to 2017, emojis are still developing, getting

diverse update with few skin tones, set of same-sex couples, rise of single dad, pride flag, and

weightlifting emoji, and also the proposals of new characters conveying information across

language and culture like a mosquito to signify illnesses like Malaria and Zika. (A. Pardes, 2018).

With over 3.8 billion internet users worldwide, 90 percent of them use emojis in

communicating, making it prevalent in the 21st century culture. For this reason, emojis do not take

over language of communication, but rather supplement emotional signs missing from typed

conversations (V. Evans, 2017). These picture characters definitely speak for hard to express

feelings and spell out the meaning behind emotions that cannot be seen through electronic devices,
unlike face-to-face interaction where reactions can clearly be recognized. Vyvyan Evans (2017)

also specified that digital text alone is a poor communication for it delivers dry emotions. Using

emojis make communication easier, assisting users to become effective communicators and

allowing digital communication as interactive as possible.

One of the biggest influences of emojis is through marketing communication. Advertising is

expensive as we all know but they are one of strategies as to how they may improve their

marketing/businesses. Even companies use them these days! For instance, Burger King made their

own chicken fries emojis.

Figure1: Chicken Fries emojis by Burger King

Another example are tweets from Domino’s pizza, they have been tweeting like this in order to

advertise their own product/s:

Figure 2: Domino’s Pizza tweet from July 28th 2015

At this point, we’ve seen how emojis work and their impacts through text-messaging and

expression. Through the past years, there have been animations created by movie companies

made for the enjoyment of children. “Although the kinds of products marketed to children have

remained much the same, the buying power of children and adolescents has increased

exponentially over time. The affluence of today’s children and adolescents has made a youth

market eminently worthy of pursuit by business. Youth now have influence over billions of

dollars in spending each year.” (Calvert, 2008. P. 206) In August 2017, a movie called “The

Emoji Movie” was released. Figure 3 shows the movie poster released by 3 movie companies

namely: Columbia Pictures, LStar, and Sony. This is the first animation movie based on emojis.

“For the first time in history emojis convey not only single human emotion/s but personify

humans. Thus, the other static pictograms come alive.” (Balkan Social Science Review, p. 141).

Though, according to multiple opinions and reviews, it was ‘the worst’ film they’ve ever seen.

The Film Theory, a YouTube channel, even created a video that the movie was illegal.

Figure 3: The Emoji Movie poster

 Emojis, from this context, shows how strategic it is to use these. They become more

profitable if they are to use visual representations of their products according to Billa

supermarkets review.

Looking at the wider inference of emojis, aside from filling the gap of emotions between

textspeak and face-to-face communication, Alizah K. Lowell (2016) specified that emojis can

lighten moods, soften a blow, find more comfortable way to express, and communicate when

words fail people. Emojis can lighten mood. At times, people feel that the world is against them,

however, emojis have inviting appeal that ease their current state. It can also soften a blow,

reducing the intensity of conversation not to become too serious that could possibly lead to

negative consequences. Through emojis, sometimes words are no longer needed. These little

images can speak loud to convey what the heart and mind cannot easily utter. Lastly, when words

fail to give the right meaning, emojis can catch people’s chaotic thoughts and feelings.

Nevertheless, what is more indispensable is to make use of emojis in a manner that can enrich

communication and not to exploit its beneficial function.

From this context, we can say that emojis have had a huge impact internationally. The

sentimental value of a message becomes more meaningful when it is partnered with multiple

emojis. Aside from this, they have or are being used in marketing strategies for companies to

advertise their products or services. The prevalence of emojis keeps rising as technology ultimately

develops. Over the years, based from the data and information we have collected, emojis are very

much popular in social media. They appear in numerous tweets, posts, text-messages, among

others. The reason why these little pictographs exploded is because they are limited to an

expression, no need to write down multiple punctuation marks or messaging “hahaha,” in other

words, they help media users to express which emotion they wish to convey. For instance, an
individual wants to crack a joke over a post or any form of media, adding emojis may add humor

to these digital conversations. To put it simply, emojis as non-verbal communication carryover

one’s idiolect. Basing from their given context and indicated emoji (tone), one may initially

conclude or interpret what their partner, associate, friend/s is/are saying. They may enhance

connectivity towards the person they’re talking to.