Assuming no other forms of written communication have been discovered and the text message full of nothing but emoticons is the only thing they have to use to judge our level of advancement, what will the future archeologists think of our culture and our civilization? Will they conclude that we were simply their knuckle-dragging ancestors further down the evolutionary timeline? Will they see the emoticons as a form of efficient and compact communication that eclipsed the burdensome use of letters, words and punctuation?

In this installment of 40 Foot Buffet, Guest Columnist Katie Feo provides a scholarly yet entertaining (?!) analysis and defense of the use of emoticons, future archeologists be damned.

In Defense of Stupidity

By Katie Feo

:-[ 

Unsmiling blockhead; also, criticism

From Computeruser.com’s ‘High Tech Dictionary’

According to ComputerUser.com’s ‘High-Tech Dictionary’, emoticons are: ‘facial expressions made by a certain series of keystrokes, most often producing an image of a face sideways.’[i] According to those who use them in the everyday practices of text messaging, blog proselytizing, and chat-room dating, emoticons are: totally awesome.

But what about the haters, those text traditionalists and defenders of the immobile phone that see the proliferation of text-esque language as indicative of an unstoppable slip down a cultural shame spiral; one of several stops on a road leading to complete degeneracy of the spoken and written word (painfully scooted towards its nadir by the comforting, yet limited familiarity of ‘predictive text’)? To me, these complaints smack of the hyperbole often intoned by alarmed intellectuals who declare that the ever-increasing glut of popular media (silly/tedious television ‘reality shows’ in particular) is making ‘us’—a nebulous assemblage that is assumed to include neither the speaker nor the typically academic audience—‘dumber.’

But what if texting and emoticons are not making us dumber? What if, in some strange and unlikely victory for valley girls and video game addicts everywhere, it actually makes us, like, smarter? For in viewing and utilizing text that becomes something entirely new—dingbats morphed into symbolic entities—are we not exercising untapped and worthwhile interpretive skills? Text as we know it today, in almost all acceptably intelligent forms, is not seen as a visual structure in and of itself. We look through the body of words on a page to find their meaning. ‘Good’ readers are not required to notice typography or layout while absorbing a page of text.

In the eighteenth-century, a typographical ‘revolution’ (an oxymoron by popular, if not grammatical, standards) occurred in England when italics and capitalized common nouns went out of fashion in high-brow print culture.[ii] The visual creativity of text, an engagement with its shape and flow as a physical form, was subjugated to the greater concerns of content and meaning. This shift made the active analysis of textual symbols—and all the potential multiplicity of meaning contained therein—a non-issue, perhaps rendering readers more passive in the process. 

Stretching our conceptions of language to re-include figurative representations (like emoticons) might make us smart in the same way that Malcolm Gladwell identifies video games as promoting a ‘kind of fluid problem solving that matters in things like IQ tests’, complementing other, more traditional ‘crystallized knowledge that comes from explicit learning’.[iii] And so, without traveling too far into defensive justification of generally agreed upon societal ills (e.g. ‘coca cola might be strong enough to completely dissolve your tooth enamel, but it also makes you sharp as a tack!’), I would like to take a textual pause—some space in my otherwise word-heavy relationship with writing—to embrace the newest incarnation of the (text) revolution: the emoticon.[iv] :)

Emoticons are FUNctional!

D:-o, >:->! :+( =:-(, %*} & £-), !-(, !-). :-I %-} & :-J! ^5! 

(Translation: Hats off to you, you little mischievous devil! After being punched in the nose by that hosehead (while inebriated and partying all night!) you had a black eye, but you were proud of that black eye! I find your indifference humorous/ironic! High Five!)

There seem to be proportionally more emoticons in Computeruser.com’s ‘High Tech Dictionary’ dedicated to activities such as ‘partied all night’ (#:-o), ‘smoking’ (:Q~), ‘fighting’ (%+{) and the feelings that result from such activities--‘brain dead’ (%-6), ‘disgust’ (:I)‘single tear’ (:`-(). This might indicate a predilection associated with the social groups who are the most fluent in text-esque communication; however, the ubiquity of these emoticons is an expected limitation of a system still in its adolescent linguistic form.

Emoticons are topical.

+O:-) X-(! :-Y ~== (:-\, :-e, }:[ +<:-)

(Translation: The pope just died! As an aside, and what I’m about to say might sound inflammatory, I’d like to add that I am saddened, disappointed and frustrated at the new religious leader.)

Still, there exist a number of descriptors in the High Tech Dictionary TD that might fall out of the expected parameters of text-message content. Seemingly bizarre and unnecessary, they sometimes prove useful in a moment of conversational serendipity (take for instance the usefulness of 7:^), in other words, the third emoticon variation of ‘Ronald Regan’). If nothing else, they are optimistic projections about the future scope of the form’s working vocabulary. 

Emoticons can be theoretical/abstract.

:-I :-I 2BI^2B \ 8-[ & à..à. :(

(Translation: The repetitive ‘déjà vu’-like questioning of my existence leaves me feeling overwrought and alienated. Sad face.)

And finally, there is no reason that emoticons should limit the profundity of a message, even one arriving via cellular phone. Granted, the syntactical capacity of emoticons, limited by symbol variety, may compromise the content of a message. But this ‘limited pallette’ effect is arguably what makes using the emoticon a challenging, and ultimately rewarding, experience. Why struggle for words to express the emotional vulnerability of an existential crisis when you could be using an emoticon instead?

Brevity—it’s a worthwhile goal, a brave goal, and yet, still, one that is antithetical to everything that flows naturally from my loose and windy mouth. But doesn’t the emoticon typify the very simplicity that I wish to achieve? Emoticons could provide a swift and necessary kick to the sad-pants of any and all existing written genres—Cookbooks! :) Dear John letters! :( Design criticism! :-I. But as it stands now, emoticons are relegated to communication on the periphery; they are the secret knowledge of furtive and frantic adolescents text-messaging during class, of faceless couples fondling the sticky-sweet blossom of online romance, of savvy insiders who always read with a slight tilt to their head.