then you follow me The emoticon: more than a face
Today, people are able to communicate rapidly through a range of mediums – and perhaps no linguistic development better indicates changes in the ways we communicate than the ubiquitous emoticon.
The emoticon :) – a colon followed by a parenthesis – is a visual representation of a smiley face turned sideways. Although an emoticon may look like a smile, a frown or any number of facial expressions, it doesn’t represent a face, as many internet users assume. It’s actually intended to convey a feeling (“I’m happy,” or “just joking”).
This meaning is evident even in the first emoticon, credited to Scott Fahlman at Carnegie Mellon University. In a 1982 e-mail, Fahlman suggested :-) as a “joke marker” to indicate wisecracks or sarcasm in text communication. In this legendary e-mail, he also used the first instance of the frown emoticon :-(.
Words that represent these feelings are what linguists call discourse particles, or little pieces of language that convey information about the tone of the statement. Folklorist Lee-Ellen Marvin called them the “paralanguage of the internet, the winks which signal the playfulness of a statement over the seriousness it might denote.”
In a study of instant messaging, scholar Shao-Kang Lo describes emoticons as “quasi-nonverbal cues” – something that looks like a word, but performs the functions of a nonverbal cue, like a hand gesture or nod.
In fact, the variations in how you construct this emoticon can imply something about your identity, just like whether you use a soda, pop or Coke can suggest what part of the United States you come from. For example, as linguist and data scientist Tyler Schnoebelen pointed out in a 2012 study, people who put a “nose” in their emoticons tend to be older than non-nose emoticon users.
Though emoticons have been the subject of numerous studies, individual symbols – which serve a different purpose than emoticons – can add meaning to a message or express meaning all on their own. ex joy,melancholy,indifference ,astonishment .plz follow me entrust .nice study bye.
