Emojis and Emoticons – Their Birth and a Brief History

By

Annapoorani
1.1 Introduction

Communication is just as important today as it was 200 or even 2000 years ago, today
probably it has even become more of a necessity. It is just that the way one does it is
different. Not so much face to face conversations happen, but most of the personal
communication happens over digital communication channels as it allows one to talk to a
person in any part of the world at any time. The most popular medium in the past two years
being instant messaging also colloquially known as ‘texting’, ‘chatting’ and ‘messaging’.
These channels are more popular for socialising and personal communication rather than
for professional purposes, although that is also constantly increasing. Through these
channels we express our happiness, sadness, disappointment, sarcasm, anger, opinions,
encouragement, mockery and any possible emotion that we feel. How does this work on
digital channels which relies a lot on written communication? Because the key point in
communication is that it is never limited to just words. The emotional quality to words is
given by the gestures and tone that accompanies it.

Conventionally there is a difference between casual speech and written communication, but
written communication in the context of texting is not like that. According to linguist John
McWhorter in his Ted talk, texting is a direct extension of speech. According to him people
speak in word packets of 7-10 words, which is directly extended to texting as well. If words
extend themselves to texting directly from casual speech, in terms of relatively easy usage
of words and simpler sentences, then how does the non- verbal part of speech get extended
into texting? Because rarely is natural language ever limited to speech alone. When one
speaks, he constantly use gestures to illustrate what he means. They gives the emotional
and tone quality to words that helps the receiver to decode what exactly those words mean
in the given context. This function in an instant messaging service is being increasingly
performed by the emojis or emoticons.

They are small digital icons that conveys emotions visually. When they accompany the text,
they give the emotional quality to a text and conveys an emotion just like the name
suggests. But their function is not just limited to this. They are also replacing words in a lot
of places where just an emoji would work. For example, in this conversation given below,
 initiation of this conversation is only a sad
emoji, which triggers the second user to
understand that something is wrong and ask
about it. Which then triggers the
conversation.

Here the entire mood or the tone of the

conversation is created by the emojis, devoid
of which the entire conversation would seem
quiet formal and curt. The emojis here
provide a more friendly and casual speech
like quality to the text which makes it more
of a direct extension of speech.

Texting is increasingly relying on emojis and emoticons to communication, that people find
the need for more and more of them every time. They have become a visual vernacular
throughout the globe to convey emotions. Following is a study of the history and evolution
of emojis and emoticons and how these two terms have come to be used interchangeably
today; their current nature of usage in digital environments and how they have extended
themselves to other avenues to become a global phenomenon; and how effective or
homogeneous is this global phenomenon.

1.2 Etymology

Emoticon is made from the two words ‘emotion’ and ‘icon’. Whereas Emoji is a Japanese
term where e stands for picture and moji stands for character or letter.

An emoticons is a typographic display of facial expression like this one :-) or :-( which found
its first appearance in the 1980s in America.

Whereas an emoji came much later in Japan. Emojis are much more fleshed out versions of
emotions which resemble pictograms and they were not just limited to facial expressions
but also included a pantheon of objects, activities and events along with the facial
expressions.
1.2.1 Emoticons and Emojis – Are they the same?

Emojis literally meaning picture characters, are images that one can select
to accompany or replace a text in instant messaging, social media and emails. Whereas
emoticons are typographic characters like this :-) :-( ;-) or even :-D, which actually have to
be typed out. Before emoji, one could express himself on digital communication mediums
only through words and eventually emoticons which came into the picture in the early 1982
when computer scientist Scott Fahlman suggested to the Carnegie Mellon University
message board that :-) and :-( could be used to distinguish jokes from serious statements
online. Emoticons can be called a text based precursors to emojis which came about much
later in the 1990s in Japan. Emojis were actual images and not just limited to facial
expressions but also contained a variety of other pictures from a heart to painted nails and
even a ghost. Both performed the same function though emojis brought in a much more
variety. Also as the usage of internet for communication purposes increased more and more
in the 90s, messaging services started turning the typed out emoticons like :-) into images
like . Which eventually brought in the blur of both these terms being used interchangeably
as they performed the same function. In this study these two terms would be used
interchangeably as in colloquial language today.

1.3 History

Sometimes one cannot just find the right words to express oneself, this is where emojis
come in handy. One of these exact situations gave birth to what has led to a global
phenomenon of visual vernacular today.

1887 – An unpleasant proposal

In 1887, Ambrose Bierce, An American poet, journalist, and writer of satirical essays and
short stories, who is best known today for his collection of misanthropic definitions,
proposed the smiley face and other simple emoticons be added as new punctuation
characters in his essay, “For Brevity and Clarity.” In this essay he proposes ways to
"improve" the English language, Bierce proposes the adoption of certain "simple and
rational devices": what we now call blends (or portmanteau words) and emoticons.
According to him
‘While reforming the language I crave leave to introduce an improvement in punctuation--
the snigger point, or note of cachinnation. It is written thus \_/ and represents, as nearly as
may be, a smiling mouth. It is to be appended, with the full stop, to every jocular or ironical
sentence; or, without the stop, to every jocular or ironical clause of a sentence otherwise
serious--thus: Mr. Edward Bok is the noblest work of God \_/.’

This idea of including a smiley face in punctuation never appealed to the literary society at
that time and the idea never caught on until after a century.

1982 – The Joke Marker

A century later, when a computer scientist Scott Fahlman of the Carnegie Mellon University
realised his words were failing him when communicating with others on a forum, he found
that it was difficult to convey that some posts were meant to be taken as a joke. He then
proposed to the University’s message board to include a colon, a dash and a bracket :-) as a
joke maker. So that the sentences marked with this would be taken as a joke even if the
words didn’t convey it.

Through the next few years the usage of internet and messaging services increased and so
did the usage of emoticons, as more and more possibilities were explored and the trend
caught on. The AOL instant messenger which was popular back then included these joke
markers and explored various other possibilities as well. They created emoticons inspired
from the ‘smiley face’ that was another popular symbol back then, which was used
commonly in posters, buttons, desk cards etc. The smiley face was originally created by a
designer called Harvey Ball for a local American firm called the State Mutual Life Assurance
for their ‘friendship campaign’ and never bothered to copyright it and easily relatable
symbol really became a rage. This trend was very popular among the teenagers and this
symbol eventually went on to become a very important part of popular culture worldwide.
AOL created a range of 15 emoticons on this basis for their chat rooms which are as follows.
1995 – The Birth of the Modern Day Emoji

In 1995, a Japanese telemarketing company called the NTT Docomo created a heart symbol
for their pagers and the world’s first integrated mobile internet service called the i-mode
and paved the way for the birth of the modern day emojis. The heart symbol became really
popular as people said they found it cute and were able to express love over a text message
even more effectively. After seeing the popularity of this heart symbol on the network,
Shigetaka Kurita, commonly known as the father of the emoji, who worked for the company
created the first 176 emojis for cell phones, which was initially used only on the NTT
network. At that time as much as people were increasingly communicating over cell phones
and pagers it became very difficult to judge the tone of a message and what it really meant.
To solve this issue Shigetaka Kurita brought together a team and developed a set of 176 (12
x12 pixel) emojis that would cover the most common human emotion range and
communication necessities. To design them he took inspiration from elements of his
childhood such as Japanese comics like Manga and Kanji. Symbols used to express a certain
emotion was translated into an emoji. Like a light bulb to show idea and tears while
laughing to show something extremely funny. Some of the original emojis used on the NTT
network are as follows:
2007 – Emoji becomes Mainstream

Emojis became mainstream throughout the globe only when Google included them in their
gmail and gchat.

2011 – Emoji Meets iPhone

Emojis went on to become a truly global phenomenon only when Apple enabled an emoji
keyboard on the iPhone