Emojis

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“If you are too busy to laugh, you are too busy.” – Proverb

In 1990 when I was college, I went with a group to stay with a tribe in the jungle of Ecuador for two weeks. When we were there, the chief of the tribe told us a story about how they used to hunt with blow guns and darts tipped with curare. They didn’t have curare in their area but would travel into Peru to trade for it.

Then in the 1960’s, Western medicine discovered that curare was a powerful paralytic that could be useful as a muscle relaxant. They bought up all the curare so that the tribe could no longer trade for it. Instead they switched to using shotguns which meant many of the small birds and animals that they used to hunt were no longer viable because the shotgun would blast them to pieces. According to the chief, about 500 words in the language used to describe those small animals and their habitats disappeared from their language. One invention and the ripple effect changed their lore and language.

I bring this up because I’ve been thinking that the adoption of emojis has changed our language. What did we do before the 🙏 praying hands emoji to indicate we were thinking and praying for someone but unable to say that because we didn’t know their spiritual tradition and/or maybe not even be certain about our own?

Or my personal favorite is the ❤ ❤ ❤  emoji which I use instead of having to dance around whether I like or love someone.

And we were able to indicate a sly reference before the 😉 emoji? Were readers ever sure we were joking before the 😊 emoji?

Thinking that using emojis meant that I wasn’t working hard enough to convey myself with language the other day, I tried to end a text with words that meant I was thinking about and appreciating them. Five minutes later, I erased the jumble of words I came up with and replaced them with ❤ ❤ ❤

 I’m pretty sure I’ve lost 500 words from my language at least. 😊

10 thoughts on “Emojis”

  2. Emojis help for sure. I found early days of emailing and text messaging challenging because it was hard to infer and connote the tone of the message. I use emojis as a way to not be more concise but to also help add tone to minimize potential misunderstandings! My favourite for sure is 😂, which the young kids have stopped using cuz of how old people like myself have adopted it for wise use. 😆

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  4. Okay, first of all, that Ecuador experience sounds awesome! Secondly, sad about their livelihood being so greatly altered. 😦 And true about the emojis! They are quite handy. I recently was wordily constructing a text response to some negative news before I just deleted it all and replaced it with, yes, the poop emoji. Probably the only time I’ve used it, but it fit the situation perfectly. 🙂

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