Emojis: The New Emotional Quotient

On the occasion of the World Emoji Day that is celebrated on 17th July, let us get into some history of emojis and how they have completely encapsulated our emotions in the keyboard.  The World Emoji Day was first celebrated on 17 July 2014 by Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge. 17th was chosen because it was the date that was displayed on the calendar emoji on the Mac.  (Don't go and look at your phones for the 17th now, you'll sadly find only 24th there!!)

Origin

Emoji is a Japanese word that has can simply be broken down into E ("picture") + Moji ("character"). They were created by Shigetaka Kurita. The similarity with emotion or emoticon is purely incidental and emoji does not arise from any of these words and this is the reason why these emojis are more than just emotional expressions. Emoticons are like this :-), :-D while emojis are as described in the photo. The emojis first came up in the Japanese mobile phones in the year 1999 and they became worldwide only in 2010 when they were used in various operating systems. These emojis are assigned values through the Unicode system and surprisingly as of July 2017, there are 2666 emojis on the official Unicode list. 

The Eggplant Controversy

The eggplant controversy relates to an emoji that displayed eggplant (U+1F346) was being made to represent a penis in America. Several posts started cropping up on Instagram with #EggplantFridays in reference to the penis and so the hashtag related to this eggplant emoji were banned by Instagram citing policy violations against nudity and sexual content. 

Similarly, a gun controversy has also taken place. The gun was creating fear and causing violence in some places and so in August 2016, Apple changed the gun emoji (U+1F52B) from a realistic revolver to a water gun.

A New Language?

Emojis have reduced our emotions to some Unicode characters. For after almost every second sentence in an online chat we are using emojis. These emojis have been very diverse and versatile in their representation of different emotions and thoughts. These emojis are very often used in conversations online and they effectively represent our emotions to the opposite person and helps us express our thoughts and expressions in a better manner. But, it should also be understood that as is non-verbal gestures for spoken communication, so is an emoji for written communication. So, its use is very viable and useful but does it have the capacity to replace the normal mode of communication or the written language is a big question.
Stay Expressive!!

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