Hieroglyphics was a writing system developed by the ancient Egyptians. Hieroglyphics follow the Rebus Principle; meaning, they were pictures that represented ideas, things, and sounds. Hieroglyphics were basically, the foundation for our alphabet as the symbols represented sounds, like how our letters, or characters, signify different sounds.
A topic that has come up a lot in class is the development of literacy as technology advances and becomes part of our everyday life.
Social media seems to have become so commonplace and informal that a new language has developed with it: emojis. Emoji’s are little pictures that can represent ideas, things, emotions, phrases and even sounds. For example, 🙂 means happy, <3 means love, and so on and so forth. The concept of emojis have become so involved in our daily communication that companies and public figures have come out with customized emojis (i.e. Kim Kardashian’s downloadable emojis called kimojis). Sometimes, we even respond in only emojis and a conversation can include very few actual written words or phrases. So, have we reverted society back to ancient times or moved forward? Are emojis really that advanced and innovative? Now, gifs–short videos that represent feelings, ideas and words– have become the more popular form of communication. Is literacy regressing with technology?
Is technology really as advanced as we think it is or are we just circling back to the roots of our own language?
Sometimes I truly feel emojis are more effective in communicating my mood than words can be (nothing will ever beat :/ ). I also believe that being literate in emojis is a rapidly developing skill set that relies on humanity’s base instinct to assign value to visual symbols, as you mention we did with hieroglyphics.
I definitely agree. I think that the success of emojis is that they convey a different mood and emotional context than words can in a text message. They allow for a more “emotive” kind of communication. I also think it’s interesting the way that emojis can have multiple different interpretations, so instead of having established meaning they are highly dependent upon the context that they are used in.